Jesus, you call us to your infinite mercy. St. Thomas Aquinas says that your mercy is your greatest attribute, for it manifests your infinite perfection, and your infinite abundance and generosity. You have no need to love us, nor give to us any good thing; for, we are deserving only of the justice due our sins. But the Father, through you, had deigned to forgive us our faults, and still lavish upon us more gifts. Therein lies your mercy -- in you, your Person, Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God.
May we come to trust in your mercy as little children, not without fault, but knowing full-well our absolute need of you. For it is in your Person that we have become sharers in the divine nature, sharers in eternal life, sharers in your sacrificial life for our salvation and of the whole world. In you, we have been gifted grace upon grace, as St. John wrote in his Gospel. In you, we have received redemption from the realm of slavery to the realm of justice and freedom, of friendship with God our Creator. In you, we have received the hope of perfection; by your wounds we are healed. All of your works are done in mercy.
Do not, O Lord, let us forget that your mercy is not merely a forgetfulness of our sin, but an abundance given of what we do not deserve, in order to restore us to justice. You would not have it simply that our sins be forgiven and our wretchedness remain, but you have created us as new creations. In your mercy, we are made true and good. We, by your grace through your Cross and Resurrection, have been redeemed and been given light; we, therefore must be children of mercy, spreading your abundance and good-will to all. For if we do not forgive our debtors, we cannot be forgiven. If we do not show mercy, no mercy can be shown to us, since we would not allow the gift of God to live in us and through us, since we would dare to refuse the gift of justice to another.
When we had separated ourselves from you, and remained incapable of returning, you stretched out your arms in compassion to draw us back to yourself. When we were dark and void, you breathed in us new life and order. "Let there be light." It is no longer we who live, but you who live in us. There is no depth to which your mercy cannot reach. "Seek my face," you say, O Lord. Your face Lord I will seek. Can we seek any other, when in all else there is no rest nor peace? May we constantly turn to your infinite mercy. Jesus, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.
Jesus, I trust in you. +
Sainthood: A Call to Trust and Hope
The
weight of the call to holiness that Christ and his Church make to each and
every Christian is very, very heavy. It is the weight of glory. There are too
many, though, who stare in the face of evil, and tremble in fear or falter
under the false humility of despair. The reality of evil for Christians poses a
great responsibility, a free choice of life or death. The alternative to evil,
though, poses the possibility of the greatest heights of love, beyond any human
capability. The call to be saints is a call to trust and to hope.
In
the fourteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s gospel, we read the story of Jesus
walking on water. At first sight, the disciples were afraid, because they
believed Jesus to be a ghost on the sea. Jesus’ response, though, was, “It is
I; do not be afraid.” Peter replied, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to
you on the water.” And so Jesus called Peter out on the water, “Come.” Miraculously,
Peter could walk on water, too. Just one problem: Peter started to notice the wind,
the storm, and to look to himself. He began to sink. Suddenly, Peter called out
to Jesus, “Save me!” The Lord grabbed a hold of him and pulled him back up,
while saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” (14:22-33)
We
should not read this story and think to ourselves, “If only I could muster up
enough faith, then I could be perfect or like the saints.” No, this story is to
remind us of our great need for Christ. Like Peter, we really have nothing in
and of ourselves to perform the impossible. We are often tempted to look at
ourselves and see our brokenness, our frailty or our faults. Yet, instead of
looking to ourselves, or the storm around us, we should look “to Jesus, the
pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame” (Hebrews 12:2 NRSVCE). We
must, like Peter, keep our trust in Jesus, and not in ourselves. “Jesus, I
trust in you,” should be our constant prayer, as St. Faustina taught us.
The
Church and her Scriptures teach us plainly that obedience to Christ, to love
God and to love our neighbor, are not only our duty, but also our way of remaining
friends with Jesus, to enter into everlasting life (Matt. 19:17; John 3:36). So,
Jesus could say all of the following:
“Do not be astonished at this; for
the hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and
will come out – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and
those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation” (John 5:28-29
NRSVCE). “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I
have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love” (John 15:10 NRSVCE).
“You are my friends if you do what I command you”
(John 15:14 NRSVCE).
Jesus is calling us to a life of
love, a life of complete joy. He wants what is best for us, and is calling us
to our greatest possibilities.
Jesus,
despite his high calling for us, does not want us to be afraid. He does not
want us to live in fear of “breaking commandments” and “going to hell.” A lot
of Christians grew up hearing things like this: “If you don’t obey your parents
… If you don’t go to church … if you aren’t a good boy, you’ll go to hell.”
Well, we know these to be sayings to try to scare children into being good.
These sayings, though, are very lopsided. They only tell part of and a very
skewed version of truth. On the other side of these commands is a loving God,
who wants to give us all good things, now and for eternity. He does not want us to be afraid. “It
is I; be not afraid.” With his grace, all things are made possible: “for
God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of
love and of self-discipline” (2 Tim. 1:7 NRSVCE).
In the
story of Peter walking out to Jesus on water, there is one other thing we must realize.
That is, Jesus calls us to hope. Before Peter even began to walk out on water,
he asked Jesus to command him to come. In his request there was hope that he
could be like Christ. Just as Jesus commanded Peter, “Come,” he calls us, too,
to a greater hope by following him. He calls us to a hope of glory, desiring us
to become like him, restored to fullness in him. So, St. Paul wrote, “I pray
that … you may come to know him, so that with the eyes of your heart
enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are
the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the
immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe …” (Eph. 1:17-19
NRSVCE). Having a hope that one day we will be fully like him, St. John reiterated
the call: “All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure”
(1 John 3:3 NRSVCE).
Because
God’s idea of perfection is love, this means several things for our journey. First,
we should protect ourselves against scrupulosity, being overly concerned about
minor faults, things that may not even be sinful. The Church has always taught
us that no one can live without daily faults, which are an effect of our broken
nature. We also must remember what St. John wrote, “All wrongdoing is sin, but
there is a sin that is not mortal” (1 John 5:17 NRSVCE). What we mean by being “holy”
or “saintly” is to not completely turn away from love, to not kill charity
within our souls. Being scrupulous about every imperfection will probably drive
a person out of their mind. As for our daily faults, we must leave them in the
hands of Christ, who takes away the sin of the world, while striving to become
like him. We must seek the blamelessness of the saints throughout history and
throughout the Scriptures, meaning that we fulfill the law of love towards God
and our neighbor (Rom. 13:10).
There
will be a spiritual battle, no doubt. We do not mean to say that the Christian
life is not difficult in any way. The Catechism teaches us that “the way
of perfection passes by way of the Cross. There is no holiness without
renunciation and spiritual battle” (CCC, 2015). But if God, who did not spare
his own Son in order to justify us, who has given us the Most Holy Sacrament of
the Eucharist for nourishment on our journey, who has given us the sacrament of
reconciliation for healing and peace, for strengthening and for forgiveness
along the way, and especially who has given the outpouring of his Spirit into
our hearts upon our Confirmations … if He is for us, who or what can be against
us? We must hope, then, in Christ and trust him who is Love itself. For he has
great plans for us.
“Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to
make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to
the only God our Saviour, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty,
power, and authority, before all time and now and for ever. Amen” (Jude 24-25
NRSVCE).
Common Sense Catholicity Item #3: Purgatory Is Not a Second Chance
Floating
around out there in the realm of mythology about Catholic doctrine is one
saying that gets thrown around like loose change in a washing machine. The
saying is repeated over and over again, and those who spread it to unsuspecting
believers have seemingly never taken the opportunity to hear out what Catholics
actually believe. The saying goes like this: “Catholics believe that there is
always Purgatory, if this life isn’t enough to get to heaven; Purgatory is the
belief in a second chance.”
Well,
unfortunately for everyone, the Catholic Church does not teach that there are
“second chances” after death. “Death puts an end to human life as the time open
to either accepting or rejecting the divine grace manifested in Christ,” reads
the Catechism of the Catholic Church
(1021). The Church also affirms her Scriptures as inerrant, in which we read “…
it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgement …” (Heb.
9:27 NRSVCE). Once we die, we are judged as being in friendship with God or
not, being in his grace or not, abiding in love or not. Those who die outside
of God’s grace are forever separated from him by their own free choice (CCC,
1033). Those who die in God’s grace go on to full communion with God forever
(CCC, 1023-1024).
Common Sense
Catholicity: Purgatory Is Not a Second Chance
What,
then, is “Purgatory” about? Very simply, the Church teaches that for those who
die in God’s grace and who are assured of Heaven, yet are still imperfect will
need some purification before entrance into the eternal kingdom, into the
presence of God (CCC, 1030). This purification is what the Church calls
“Purgatory;” it is a purgation or purification.
Even
without very much thought, we can see why this is needed. We often witness that
even those true believers who live according to God’s law of love may die still
having some small sins in their life. Most of us will die without reaching an
actual holiness that perfectly resembles Christ’s; we won’t be perfectly “like
Christ” just before we die. Yet, we know, too, that we will be perfected. In
that moment, we will stop being the sinners that we are now, and will never
commit a sin again. So, we can safely deduce that there will be some sort of
process in which our souls are cleansed of these faults and by which we are
brought to the actual holiness of Christ, by him and through him.
The
prophet Isaiah recounts a story or, rather, a vision that he had at one
time. At least part of this vision
seems to be a prefiguring of Purgatory itself. We find the story in Isaiah,
chapter 6. In the vision, he is brought before the throne of God. There, he sees angels proclaiming the
holiness of God: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is
full of his glory” (v. 3) Immediately, Isaiah is overcome by his own lack of
holiness in the presence of God: “I am a man of unclean lips,” he says (v. 5).
In response to this imperfection, a purification as through fire takes place:
Then one of the seraphs flew to me,
holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs.
The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: ‘Now that this has touched your
lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out’ (v. 6-7 NRSVCE).
Of
course, there are other reasons to believe in Purgatory, beyond the obvious one
mentioned above. The other major reason that the Church declares Purgatory to
be true is due to the fact that the people of God have always prayed for the
dead. The Jews prior to Christ prayed for the dead. This is evident in 2
Maccabees 12:44, in which prayers were offered for the righteous who had died,
looking forward to the resurrection. The Jews even today still hold the
practice of praying for the dead. The Christian people simply continued the
same practice, as is evident in many early Christian writings. This is why
Hebrews 12:23 speaks of “the spirits of the righteous made perfect.” If there
is no Purgatory, then there is no need for the people of God to pray for the
dead.
Eternal rest grant unto
them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace.
Amen. +
Common Sense Catholicity Item #2: Jesus Spoke with Saints, Too
One
of those really weird things that Catholics supposedly do is talk to the dead.
Yep, we talk to the dead. We don’t conjure up the dead. We don’t cast spells
and incantations, pull out the tarot cards, consult mediums and witches or use
Ouija boards. All this would be sorcery and magic, which the Church explicitly
condemns, as you might guess from all of the exorcism movies and books that
come out, in which stories there is always inevitably a Catholic priest who
attempts to exorcise the demons from any given person or house. No, we let the
Holy Spirit do all of the wiring for us, per se. (Telephone wiring, that is).
We communicate only by means of the Holy Spirit.
Often
times, Catholics request the prayers of the Saints who are in the presence the
Lord. We might ask for their intercession on behalf of others or for ourselves,
for healing and for the Spirit’s guidance or protection. We might speak with
loved ones for whom we have reasonable hope of their dying in the grace of God.
While some perceive this as a form of idolatry (“prayer can only be directed to
God,” they might say), Catholics see it as a normal continuation of what we
call “the Communion of Saints.”
By that term, all we really mean is
that those who die in Christ, do not perish at all, but are alive all the more.
In that sense, Catholics takes John 3:16 seriously: “whosoever believes will
not perish.” We believe that once a member of the Body of Christ, and dying in
God’s grace, always a member of Christ’s body. And so, “the eye cannot say to
the hand, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Cor. 12:21 NRSVCE). We also believe that,
as Christ said of the Father, “Now he is God not of
the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive. (Luke 20:38
NRSVCE)” Their life in Christ does not end, nor does their purpose within the
Body of Christ.
Common Sense Catholicity Item #2: Jesus Spoke with Saints, Too
As Catholics, we hold the belief
that Jesus was fully divine and fully human, all built into one Person. We also
believe that Jesus remained completely sinless. These truths mean that at any
given time while Jesus was in the flesh (and is in the flesh), he did not and
could not commit any error. In that way, anything that he did, we can know that
it was free of sin and is worthy of imitation. Only his declaring himself equal
and one with the Father, for us, would be considered sinful to imitate; for
him, it was just a matter of telling the truth.
It just so happens that one of the
things Jesus did, while in the flesh, was to speak with the dead. He did not
conjure up their spirits, or use any power above his human nature to speak with
them. He merely climbed up a mountain and met Moses and Elijah there to speak
with them.
Now about
eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James,
and went up on the mountain to pray. And
while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes
became dazzling white. Suddenly
they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. They appeared in glory and were speaking
of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep;
but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men
who stood with him. (Luke 9:28-32 NRSVCE)
From the
sound of Luke’s story, Jesus had an ongoing conversation with Moses and Elijah,
and it did not seem as though they had just awoken from some great slumber,
unaware of Jesus’ mission and life on earth. No, instead it seems as though
they had spoken with Jesus before about his mission. That’s just speculation.
But what we do know is that Jesus spoke with the Saints who had already died,
and yet were alive in God. Jesus did this in the flesh, under the law (as St.
Paul put it), as one of us, yet sinless.
Perhaps
the natural inclination to speak with our dearly departed, quietly before their
casket or gravesite is not so strange after all. Perhaps speaking with those
who have gone on to be with Christ is a natural act of the heart, which knows
the truth. The heart knows the truth that we should be one in Christ, and if in
grace are certainly one in Christ, alive and united by the Spirit. Christ
destroyed death when he rose again nearly 2,000 years ago. Won’t you let him
destroy death in your life, too?
Common Sense Catholicity Item #1: Mary is Not Divine
Catholics
widely celebrate and honor Mary as having a special function in human history,
and specifically in salvation history. We believe she gave birth to the Son of
God, who is fully human and fully divine -- Jesus. There are some, unfortunately, who misjudge and misunderstand
this wonderful Catholic faith-filled practice. Those who do misunderstand often
claim that Catholics believe Mary to be a goddess or even part of the Godhead,
the Trinity itself.
Woops! How far from the truth this
really is! As Catholics recognize Archangel Michael’s name to mean “Who is like
God?” we also recognize that no one can come close in comparison to God
Almighty – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. Louis de Monfort, a great promoter
of Marian devotion, even said that Mary is nothing without Jesus Christ, and
that she is but an atom compared to God himself, who is infinite.
Common Sense
Catholicity Item #1:
The
official Catholic teaching is that Mary is not divine at all, especially for
one reason: Jesus is human.
In
the Nicene Creed, recited at every Sunday Mass, Catholics all over the world
for more than 1600 years have been confessing the following:
I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and
invisible.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial
with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was
incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
Et Homo Factus Est. “And
became man.” There is no miscommunication there. Catholics have faced all
sorts of heresies throughout the centuries, some very powerfully overtaking
many populations of people, in efforts to defend the truth that Jesus was fully
human and fully divine. For the Second Person of the Trinity to become man, he
would have to be born of another human, a woman, who happened to be named Mary.
There ends the story on whether Mary is believed to be divine. The strongly
defended teaching on Jesus becoming man and the false teaching of Mary being
divine are completely incompatible. The thought would not even last more than a
few days, never mind centuries upon centuries.
Penance: Did Someone Call the Doctor?
Confession!
What a veritable spring of life from the One Who Lives! And, yet, how difficult
it can be to come to that meeting place with God, and to bear our sins to him.
How difficult it can be to overcome our pride and our shame in order to step
out into the river of mercy, which flows ever deeper and deeper. Perhaps, even,
we grow weary of confessing our sins, over and over in our brokenness and our
addictions. God, however, never grows weary of receiving us back joyfully,
forgiving us our sins, healing our wounds, repairing our relationships,
restoring us to joy, and indwelling us with his Spirit. Through the Sacrament
of Penance, Jesus, our humble and gentle physician lovingly calls to us back to
health and peace, continuing the same ministry he started while on earth.
“’But
so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive
sins’—he said to the one who was paralyzed—‘I say to you, stand up and take
your bed and go to your home’” (Luke 5:24 NRSVCE). At the time Jesus said this,
the spiritual leaders and the common folk were astonished that anyone would
claim to have the authority – or the right – to forgive sins on earth. At
first, people laughed and mocked him. But when Jesus was able to confirm his
power to forgive sins by healing people physically, as in “Stand up and take
your bed,” they marveled. St. Luke’s version of the story ends with the people
going home and saying to themselves, “We have seen strange things today” (Luke
5:26 NRSVCE).
St.
Matthew’s Gospel tells a slightly different ending, which seems very relevant.
That is, St. Matthew witnessed that immediately after the paralytic was healed,
and forgiven his sins, “they were filled with awe, and they glorified God, who
had given such authority to human beings” (Matthew 9:8 NRSVCE). The Catholic
Church, believing that all Scripture is inspired by God, also believes that
this verse contains a very important point: that God has given this authority
to forgive sins to “human beings.” That is a plural noun; it is not singular,
as if it were only meant for Christ. On the contrary, keeping in mind the
inspiration of Scripture, we find it no light point that “human beings” is
plural, because the ability, per se, to forgive sins was granted to others
after Christ, specifically, the Apostles.
In
the twentieth chapter of St. John, we read that upon Jesus’ resurrection and
first appearance to the disciples, he has something extremely important to
impart to them. “’Peace be with you. As the Father
has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said
this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if
you retain the sins of any, they are retained’” (21-23). It was at that moment,
the Church teaches us, that Jesus instituted the Sacrament of Penance. For it
was there where he imparted his own authority to forgive sins to mere men; it
was there that he gave them the ministry of peace and of reconciliation. There is
no doubt, however, about the fact that this power has its source in the Holy
Spirit, which he explicitly breathed upon them, and gave to them.
While
the first three centuries after Christ saw almost no dispute on the Church
having the power to forgive sins, there came a time when people started to
disbelieve and falsely teach against it. Ironically, it was not strictly
disputed that forgiveness of sins was possible through the successors of the
Apostles, but it was eventually disputed which kinds of sins could be forgiven.
In the third and fourth century, the Nestorian heresy had followers who denied
that “mortal sins” could be forgiven by the Church, and declared that,
therefore, any believer who fell into grave sin like idolatry or murder would
not be able to receive forgiveness again.
Saints
Athanasius and Augustine had something different to say, and fought forcefully
against these heresies. St. Athanasius, who was instrumental not only in
defining the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but also in support of the New
Testament list of books we currently hold as inspired, wrote the following
against Nestorians: “As the man whom the priest baptizes is enlightened by the
grace of the Holy Ghost, so does he who in penance confesses his sins, receive
through the priest forgiveness in virtue of the grace of Christ.” 1
The famous St. Augustine of the fourth century, the great Doctor of the Church,
wrote similarly, “Let us not listen to those who deny that the Church of God
has power to forgive all sins" (De agon. Christ., iii).1
Putting
history aside for a moment, it would be good to address the means by which the
Sacrament of Penance is given and received, and its effects. Basically, any
Christian who has committed “grave sin” with full knowledge and full consent of
the will (not by any accident) ends up with two major, natural consequences.
Firstly, they have ruptured their relationship with the God of life and love by
falling from grace similarly to Adam and Eve, but after having been washed by
the blood of Christ. Secondly, they have ruptured their spiritual relationship
with the body of Christ, the Church. Both need reconciling; both need healing.
One cannot be done without the other, for the two are inseparable – that is,
Christ and his body, the Church.
The
Sacrament of Penance is made up of several parts: contrition (or sorrow) over
sin, confession of our sins, and acts of penance, which are those things we do
to draw nearer to God, whether it be prayer or reading Scripture or giving alms,
whichever the priest justly requires. First, we must truly be sorry for our
sins, or else we cannot rightly receive forgiveness. “ For godly grief produces a repentance that
leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death,”
wrote St. Paul (2 Corinthian 7:10). Here we certainly do not mean hatred of
ourselves, by the word “sorrow.” For this would be contrary to the Gospel, but
we do mean that there should be sorrow for those things, which caused harm to
others, ourselves, and to our relationship with the God of Love.
Confession
of our sins is the second aspect of the Sacrament. This simply means to confess
our sins to a bishop, who has been handed on the authority to forgive sins, or
his representative, a priest. In the confessional, we bear our sins not only to
God, but also to the Church. In the priest, we find another Christ – Christ’s
own representative – and Christ himself offering the healing words of
forgiveness, which do not come back void. There, he listens to us, perhaps
consoles us and gives us advice for our spiritual life. Most importantly, he
wipes away every sin we’ve committed that has been previously forgiven. Our sin
is taken from us as “far as the East is from the West,” as the Scriptures tell
us; he remembers it no more.
The
healing does not simply stop there, though. We have fallen backward by our sins
in our relationship with God, and have lost ground in our conquest of love. In
fact, there are scars left from our sins. They, too, need to be healed and
erased. We must draw closer to God and regain the virtue for which he tells us
to strive. St. James harshly tells us about what our acts of penance should
look like:
Draw near
to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and
purify your hearts, you double-minded. Lament
and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into
dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord,
and he will exalt you (James 4:8-10 NRSVCE).
In the act of penance, only by the
grace of Christ and his power do we start to heal the crookedness of our hearts
and the wounds left by sin. Of course, Christ forgives and mends the broken
hearted, but there is a relationship that must be brought to its fullness of
love from within our souls and by our minds and bodies, the whole person. As
before, penances are done by prayer, Scripture reading, alms giving, or some
other act of love.
But
from the moment we leave that confessional, as many individuals have witnessed
and testified, the weight of sin, which was so heavy, is lifted off of our
shoulders, lifted off of our hearts. Our souls are lightened and rejoice. A
steady, inner peace, which surpasses all understanding, gives way to a smile
that one cannot suppress. Freedom. It is the feeling of freedom. Christ has set
us free in the Sacrament. He has restored us to life. At the same time, he has
healed the Body of Christ. Our sin has been forgiven, our sin that wounded the
Church, which is the body of Christ itself, and the unity of the body of Christ
has been restored.
The
thought of this is often ignored, but Christ is one and his body is one. Our
sin has not only an effect on ourselves, but also on the rest of the Church. We
are not living in a vacuum in space, where sin has no effect but on our own
souls. God is a community. We are part of that community, as the Church. When
we sin, it is communal. Sin affects other people, down a line of unspeakable
length. So, confession and repentance, they are not just “between God and me.”
It is between God, everyone else and me. This is why Jesus declared that all
sins will be openly known in the end, and will not be secret (Luke 12:2,3).
Penance
takes humility; it takes courage. We may be ashamed, but to face our sins and
to face evil takes strength. In fact, it takes the strength of God’s grace.
“You can do nothing apart from me,” Jesus said (John 15:5). Through Christ’s
strength and power, we can be freed from sin, even sins of addiction. Perhaps
we might fall many times, but if we continue to go to the God who calls us, we can
only become stronger in his grace. We can only grow closer to God as we
maintain the humility to confess our sins to him and to the Church. For God
exalts the humble, but he opposes the proud. Don’t let pride or shame get in
the way, between yourself and the healing that you so desire. Confess.
1 Hanna, Edward. "The Sacrament of
Penance." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 11. New York: Robert Appleton
Company, 1911. 15 Dec. 2014 .
Go to your confessor; open your
heart to him; display to him all the recesses of your soul; take the advice
that he will give you with the utmost humility and simplicity. For God, Who has
an infinite love for obedience, frequently renders profitable the counsels we
take from others, but especially from those who are the guides of our souls.
-- St. Francis de
Sales
Daughter, when you go to
confession, to this fountain of My mercy, the Blood and Water which came forth
from My Heart always flows down upon your soul and ennobles it. Every time you
go to confession, immerse yourself in My mercy, with great trust, so that I may
pour the bounty of My grace upon your soul. When you approach the confessional,
know this, that I Myself am waiting there for you.
-- Jesus
to St. Faustina (Diary)
The Never-Expendable Sacrifice of Christ
Speaking
with some Christians outside of the Catholic Church, you may never know that
the Catholic understanding of Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross is one of
comprehensive scope and infinite depth. Upon hearing that we call the Mass a
“Sacrifice,” some squirm and cringe at the sound, because they perceive wrongly
that Catholics somehow do not believe Christ’s sacrifice on the cross was
“once-for-all,” and that we nullify Christ’s words from the cross itself, “It is
finished” (John 19:30). In fact, though, Catholics would go above and beyond
the incomplete understanding of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice that teaches
the sacrifice is limited to history. Catholics believe his sacrifice to be an eternal,
never-expendable source.
Practically, when I write that the
sacrifice of the cross is never-expendable, I mean that it can be offered over
and over again, without ever being diminished or depleted. Here I specifically
point to the Mass itself, which is the continually repeated act of obedience of
the Church to Christ’s own command. Catholics look at the Deposit of Faith,
handed down through the centuries, and see that Christ’s sacrifice began at the
Last Supper, when he said, “This is my body… This is my blood… Do this in
remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The Eucharistic celebration,
called the Mass, is our form of worship, following out the command to
“remember” the Lord’s death and resurrection for our redemption and freedom.
Perhaps it is not so obvious to the
English speaker’s ears, but “do this in remembrance” was to the apostles
clearly a call to offer sacrifice. A “memorial sacrifice” was often commanded
by the Lord to the people of Israel. In fact, Passover itself, which was the
foreshadowing of Christ’s own Passover, was a memorial sacrifice; it was a
memorial of the event in which God won for the people of Israel their freedom
from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12:14,17). As the Catechism points out, a
memorial sacrifice is not an empty act of intellectual memory; it is, rather,
something that recalls and, to some degree, makes present now that which had historically
happened. So, the Israelites sacrificed and then ate entirely a lamb for
Passover every year. Other items were used to make present the event of the
Exodus out of Egypt and God’s magnificent power to save (CCC, 1363). The same
is true for the Mass: Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice is made truly present in
the act of remembrance, even Christ himself fully-present, and the sacrificial
value is made truly available again and again.
What is the purpose of doing it
again and again, though, if Christ did it once-for-all in the first century?
The simple answer is, first, that Christ commanded it. Secondly, the continual
and repeated offering makes present to us in the here and now that “Lamb of
God, who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Yes, Christ offered
himself up two thousand years ago, but that same sacrifice is not limited to
time and space: we can receive it in its fullness now, in our own time. Every
time someone is baptized with water and Spirit, the saving merit of the Cross
is made present for that soul in that moment. The same is true for the
Eucharist in the Mass, except that the entire sacrifice itself is made present
and available to us, for the reception of grace and the forgiveness of sins.
The event of the Cross is brought to the present moment at each Mass.
In fact, the Council of Trent in
the year 1562, following the mass exodus of millions of Catholics to
Protestantism, reaffirmed that the sacrifice of the Mass “is truly
propitiatory.” What the Council meant by this statement is that the Sacrifice
of the Mass has the same exact merit and value of Christ’s original sacrifice
made in the first century. The reason is simply because it is one and the same
sacrifice with that on the cross, being re-presented (CCC, 1366). Why would we
want to neglect such a great gift, to offer up the greatest sacrifice of all
time to God for the salvation of the world? After all, after the priestly
office and authority handed on to the apostles, we the Church are all called to
a holy and royal priesthood to offer sacrifices (1 Peter 2:9).
In God’s infinite mercy and wisdom,
he has made it so that we, too, with Mary can stand at the foot of the cross
and offer up the Son to the Father in thanksgiving, praise, and petition for
forgiveness and grace, to grow in holiness and sanctification. This is the
infinite plenitude of the Cross, that “from his fullness, we all have received
grace upon grace” (John 1:16 NRSVCE). Every Mass brings a renewed grace of
salvation, equal to the same and once-for-all sacrifice on the Cross. And
through this Sacrifice, we are able to present ourselves as a “living
sacrifice” by partaking and participating in the one Sacrifice, present in the
Eucharist (Romans 12:1).
The boundless scope of Christ’s
sacrifice, then, encompasses not only the eternal aspect (i.e., not limited to
history) of Christ’s saving act, but also that his sacrifice is an inexhaustible
source of grace in which we can participate. All of our prayers, works, joys
and sufferings are able to be united to the sacrifice of the Cross, and the
Mass. Only through the Cross of Christ can we offer any personal sacrifices up
to God (CCC, 2031, 618). As the Church is Christ’s body, we are able to
participate in his sacrifice to the Father. All of our good works and our
sufferings are granted merit as a gift simply because they are united to the
one and same Lord to whom we belong, as his body (CCC, 1368, 2008). Therein lies
the infinite value of Christ’s sacrifice: the one Sacrifice redeems and
restores every single faithful believer to justice and makes us able and valid
participants in the priesthood of Christ, and especially through the Mass, we
can access the fruits of that sacrifice an infinite number of times. Nothing
can diminish it. Nothing can expend it.
For from
the rising of the sun to its setting my name is great among the nations, and in
every place incense is offered to my name, and a pure offering; for my name is
great among the nations, says the Lord of
hosts.
--
Malachi 1:11 NRSVCE
The cup
of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing in the blood of Christ? The
bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are
many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread. Consider the people of Israel; are not those who eat the
sacrifices partners in the altar?
--1
Corinthians 10:16-18 NRSVCE
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