From GOD-SENT, by Roy Abraham Varghese: The Mother of Christ wants all her children to be saved: she yearns to
save them [through their acceptance of her Son] not simply from temporal
chastisement but an eternal chastisement that comes from their freely chosen
everlasting separation from God. If we ask why the Virgin weeps in her
apparitions and her images around the world, the answer is simple: Ultimately
there is only one thing to be sad about in life and in eternity, and that is
the eternal loss of a soul. As she has said more than one in her apparitions:
she weeps because of the hardness of hearts, because of the worldwide suffering
that will result from divine retribution and most of all because of the
perdition awaiting those who will not obey. [p. 7, op.cit.]
On Palm/Passion Sunday in 1937, a decade not unlike our own
with assaults on the Church and family, wars and rumors of wars, Pope Pius XI
had his encyclical shining light on the darkness of Nazism, Mit Brennender
Sorge smuggled into and read from all the pulpits in Germany.
Like Our Blessed Mother, Pope Pius, as must every Pontiff,
sought to speak truth, to encourage the faithful, by proclaiming the Gospel: “Original sin” is the hereditary but
impersonal fault of Adam’s descendants, who have sinned in him [Rom.v.12]. It
is the loss of grace, and therefore of eternal life, together with a propensity
to evil, which everybody must, with the assistance of grace, penance,
resistance and moral effort, repress and conquer…The cross of Christ, thought
it has become to many a stumbling block and foolishness [1 Cor.i.23] remains
for the believer the holy sign of his redemption, the emblem of moral strength
and greatness. We live in its shadow and die in its embrace. It will stand on
our grave as a pledge of our faith and our hope in eternal light…Whoever exalts
race, of the people, or the State, or a particular form of State, or the
depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human
community….whoever raise these notes above their standard value and divinizes
them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world
planned and created by God; he is far from the true faith in God and from the
concept of life which that faith upholds. [cf. op.cit. paras: 25, 26, &
8]
St. John Paul II places before us the reality that the merciful
love of God is greater than our capacity for sin: It is "God, who is rich in mercy" 1 whom
Jesus Christ has revealed to us as Father: it is His very Son who, in Himself,
has manifested Him and made Him known to us.2
Memorable in this regard is the moment when Philip, one of the twelve Apostles,
turned to Christ and said: "Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be
satisfied"; and Jesus replied: "Have I been with you so long, and yet
you do not know me...? He who has seen me has seen the Father."3 These
words were spoken during the farewell discourse at the end of the paschal
supper, which was followed by the events of those holy days during which
confirmation was to be given once and for all of the fact that "God, who is
rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were
dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.”….. The cross of Christ on Calvary is also a witness to the
strength of evil against the very Son of God, against the one who, alone among
all the sons of men, was by His nature absolutely innocent and free from sin,
and whose coming into the world was untainted by the disobedience of Adam and
the inheritance of original sin. And here, precisely in Him, in Christ, justice
is done to sin at the price of His sacrifice, of His obedience "even to
death."81 He
who was without sin, "God made him sin for our sake."82
Justice is also brought to bear upon death, which from the beginning of man's
history had been allied to sin. Death has justice done to it at the price of
the death of the one who was without sin and who alone was able-by means of his
own death-to inflict death upon death.83 In
this way the cross of Christ, on which the Son, consubstantial with the Father,
renders full justice to God, is also a radical revelation of mercy, or rather
of the love that goes against what constitutes the very root of evil in the
history of man: against sin and death…… The Church proclaims the truth of God's
mercy revealed in the crucified and risen Christ, and she professes it in
various ways. Furthermore, she seeks to practice mercy towards people through
people, and she sees in this an indispensable condition for solicitude for a
better and "more human" world, today and tomorrow. However, at no
time and in no historical period-especially at a moment as critical as our
own-can the Church forget the prayer that is a cry for the mercy of God amid
the many forms of evil which weigh upon humanity and threaten it. Precisely
this is the fundamental right and duty of the Church in Christ Jesus, her right
and duty towards God and towards humanity. The more the human conscience
succumbs to secularization, loses its sense of the very meaning of the word
"mercy," moves away from God and distances itself from the mystery of
mercy, the more the Church has the right and the duty to appeal to the God of
mercy "with loud cries."135
These "loud cries" should be the mark of the Church of our times,
cries uttered to God to implore His mercy, the certain manifestation of which
she professes and proclaims as having already come in Jesus crucified and
risen, that is, in the Paschal Mystery. It is this mystery which bears within
itself the most complete revelation of mercy, that is, of that love which is
more powerful than death, more powerful than sin and every evil, the love which
lifts man up when he falls into the abyss and frees him from the greatest
threats. [Dives
In Misericordia, paras. 1; 8.1; 15]
Pope Francis in his General Audience address this week reminds us that: The Triduum opens with the commemoration of the Last Supper. On the eve of his Passion, Jesus offered the Father his Body and his Blood under the species of bread and wine and, giving it as nutriment to the Apostles, he commanded them to perpetuate the offer in his memory. Recalling the washing of the feet, the Gospel of this celebration expresses the same meaning of the Eucharist under another perspective. Jesus – as a servant – washes the feet of Simon Peter and the other eleven disciples (Cf. John 13:4-5). With this prophetic gesture, He expresses the meaning of his life and of his Passion, as service to God and to brothers: “For the Son of man has come not to be served but to serve” (Mark 10:45)…. Then, …. in the liturgy of Good Friday we meditate on the mystery of the Death of Christ and we adore the Cross. In the last moments of his life, before rendering his spirit to the Father, Jesus said: “It is finished!” (John 19:30). What does this word mean that Jesus says “It is finished”? It means that the work of salvation is finished, that all the Scriptures find their fulfilment in the love of Christ, immolated Lamb. With his sacrifice, Jesus transformed the greatest iniquity into the greatest love… Holy Saturday is the day in which the Church contemplates Christ’s rest in the tomb after the victorious combat of the cross. On Holy Saturday the Church identifies herself, once again, with Mary: all her faith is gathered in Her, the first and perfect disciple, the first and perfect believer. In the darkness that enveloped Creation, She remains alone holding the flame of faith lighted, hoping against all hope (Cf. Romans 4:18)……And in the great Easter Vigil, in the late evening, in which the Alleluia resounds again, we celebrate the Risen Christ, center and end of the cosmos and of history; we watch full of hope while awaiting his return, when Easter will have its full manifestation. Sometimes the darkness of night seems to penetrate the soul; sometimes we think: “now there is nothing to be done,” and the heart no longer finds the strength to love ... However, precisely in that darkness Christ lights the fire of the love of God: a flash breaks the darkness and announces a new beginning. Something begins in the most profound darkness! We know that the night is darkest before the day begins. However, precisely in the darkness, it is Christ that conquers and lights the fire of love. The stone of sorrow is overturned leaving space for hope. See the great mystery of Easter! On this holy night the Church gives us the light of the Risen One, so that in us there is not the lament of the one who says “now ...”, but the hope of one who opens himself to a present full of [promise for] future: Christ has conquered death, and we with Him. Our life does not end before the stone of the sepulchre! Our life goes beyond with the hope of Christ who has risen! – in fact, from that sepulchre. We are called as Christians to be watchmen of the morning, who are able to perceive the signs of the Risen One, as the women and the disciples did who went to the sepulchre at dawn on the first day of the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment