Take off the old man

March 24It is necessary that the Christian is free from all these vices, if you want to live in the spirit of Jesus Christ. Now, all these vices and all these sins make the old man, the earthly man, the carnal man, this man just wants to strip the Apostle Christian: "Put off the old man with his deeds." The Christian, therefore, dead and risen with Jesus through baptism should strive always renewed and improved, contemplating the eternal truths of God's will, in short, must strive to acquire the likeness of the Lord who created.That makes us Christian perfection, that's what the apostle urges us to the most wise expression: "Put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge of the truth, in the image of its Creator." But who is the new man which the Apostle speaks here? Man is sanctified by baptism, according to the principles of sanctification, must live "in true holiness and righteousness."We, as Christians, are the image of God in two ways: by nature, that is, because we are endowed with intellect, memory and will, and by grace, as we have been sanctified in baptism, which prints in our soul the precious image of God. Yes, my dear, sanctifying grace prints so the image of God in us that we become too us almost a God by participation, and, to use the beautiful expression of St. Peter, "For us to become partakers of the divine nature. "Look, my sister, how great is our dignity. But we're big on condition that we keep sanctifying grace, but, alas!, What abject becomes one when he loses that grace. Our abjection is less, I say, to that of the wild beasts. All gone, all is lost to sin.(November 16, 1914, to Raffaelina Cerase - Ep. II, p. 226)