Magnificat Vol. LX, No. 1 7 He spoke these words, He had not yet proclaimed His kingship. “But if anyone wants to acknowledge Me and follow Me as his King, and wants to be My servant, My disciple, wants to be Mine, then let him deny himself. Let him deny himself and follow Me.” Love of God and neighbor I invite the preachers to develop the theme this year. It is an enormous subject! The me is as enormous as man’s vanity, as subtle and cunning as man’s pride. Good Lord, how subtle and cruel that me is! My brothers and sisters, I invite you to show no mercy to your me. Unmask it. Be all love for God, all love for your neighbor. At any rate, that is the formula. Do you want to put your ego to death? Apply your heart and your thought to Jesus, to God and your neighbor. Surely you have already experienced this. Experience it more and more. We apply ourselves to God through obedience, through the practice of the Gospel and the Commandments, through humble submission to superiors, through the accomplishment of the rules and regulations, of our duties. All of this is seeking God. And love of neighbor is equal to the first commandment.7 Let us apply ourselves to this, forgetting our ego, and we will have a royal year. Oh, it will be a holy year! The lessons of Jesus, our King I would like to contemplate with you the example of Jesus, make the portrait of our King in this centennial year of the feast of His kingship. How did our King manifest Himself? While the Infant Jesus was in the manger in Bethlehem, three kings from the East arrived in Jerusalem and inquired: “Where is the King of the Jews who has just been born? We have seen His star in the East, and we have come to worship Him.”8 And the people answered, “What do you mean, a king?” God, the great King of the Jews, our eternal King, becomes incarnate, He comes to manifest Himself to man, and He is so hidden and unknown that no one knows it. He descends into such lowliness that nothing indicates His coming – nothing! This is how He begins His kingdom, His reign. We need to be very attentive, my brothers, to fully grasp the lessons our King gives us right from the manger, from the very start of His coming into this world. Intrigued, King Herod summons the sages and scribes who know the Scriptures concerning the coming of the Messiah: “Ah yes!” they say, “it is in Bethlehem that He is to be born.” The good kings go 7. Cf. St. Matthew 22:37-39 – Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with thy whole strength, with thy whole mind. That is the greatest and first commandment. But the second is like it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. 8. Cf. St. Matthew 2:1-6 ff.
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