The works of each day-our work, the little services we render to others, the joys, the rest, the pain and fatigue we carry with panache and offer to the Lord-can be meritorious because of the infinite merits that Christ attained for us in his life here on earth, for from his fullness we all receive grace upon grace. To some gifts are added others, in the measure in which we correspond; and all flow from the one fountain which is Christ, whose fullness of grace is never exhausted. "He does not have the gift received by participation, but is the very source, the very root of all good things: Life itself, Light itself, Truth itself. And He does not retain in Himself the riches of His goods, but gives them to all others; and having dispensed them, He remains full; He diminishes nothing by having distributed them to others, but by filling and making all partake of these goods He remains in the same perfection."
A single drop of His Blood, the Church teaches, would have sufficed for the Redemption of the whole human race. St. Thomas expressed it in the hymn Adoro te devote, which many Christians often meditate on to grow in love and devotion to the Holy Eucharist: Pie pellicane, Iesu Domine, me immundum munda munda tuo sanguine.... Merciful pelican, Lord Jesus, // purify my stains with your Blood, // of which a single drop is sufficient // to wipe away all the sins of the whole world.
The least act of love of Jesus, in his childhood, in his life of work in Nazareth..., had an infinite value to obtain sanctifying grace, eternal life and the necessary aids to reach it, to all men past, present and those who are to come
No one participated with such fullness in the merits of her Son as the Virgin, Mother of God and our Mother. Because of her impeccability, her merits were greater, even more strictly "meritorious," than those of all other creatures, because, being free from concupiscence and other hindrances, her freedom was greater, and freedom is the radical principle of merit. Meritorious were all the sacrifices and sorrows that were brought to her by being the Mother of God: from the poverty of Bethlehem, to the anxiety of the flight into Egypt..., to the sword that pierced her heart when she contemplated the sufferings of Jesus on the Cross. And all the joys and joys that his immense faith and all-pervading love produced in him were meritorious, for it is not the weightiness of an action that makes it meritorious, but the love with which it is done. "It is not the difficulty there is in loving the enemy that counts for the meritorious, if it is not in the measure in which the perfection of love is manifested in it, that triumphs over that difficulty. Thus, if charity were so complete as to suppress the difficulty altogether, it would then be all the more meritorious," teaches St. Thomas Aquinas. Such was Mary's charity.
It should give us great joy to frequently consider the infinite merits of Christ, the source of our spiritual life. Contemplating also the graces that St. Mary has won for us will strengthen our hope and effectively revive us in moments of discouragement or weariness, or when the people we want to bring to Christ do not seem to respond and we realize the need to merit for them.
Hablar con Dios