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JMJ
Holy Week
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| "They SHALL look on Him Whom they pierced" (Jn. 19.37) |
Love unites one person to another. In the Christian life, it is charity or the supernatural love that pours forth from the Sacred Heart of Jesus into our hearts
that alone can unite us fully to God. This supernatural love lays hold
of our entire soul, intellect, heart (with all its affections,delights,
and desires), will, activity, and delivers all unreservedly to God.
Thus, the essence of love itself is devotedness. It is a
firm determination of the will to give oneself up to another, and, if
need be, to make the entire sacrifice of self to the other, preferring
his good pleasure to that of self.
In this earthly life, in our present state of fallen nature where our
tendencies have been disordered – seeking and pursuing our happiness in
our self-worth, bodily fitness, pleasures and comforts, and the best
possible life the world can offer – we cannot love God with our whole mind, heart, soul and strength (Lk. 10.27) without suffering: without scraping
off from our hearts all the hardened dross that has accumulated since
the dawn of reason and which blocked the full reign of the Beloved Who does not tolerate half-measures:
I would thou wert cold or hot. But because thou art lukewarm, and
neither cold, nor hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of My mouth (Apoc. 3.15,16; cf., also our post “The Ultimate Delusion of Vatican II ‘Catholicism’”). Therefore, “O my God, I choose everything. I do not want to be a saint by halves. I am not afraid to suffer for You,” says our dear “Little Therese”.
The Cross is suffering viewed in the supernatural light of faith as
an instrument of salvation and sanctification, and therefore, as an
instrument of love. Seen in this light, the Cross is certainly worthy of
love; it is the outstanding means of our sanctification. Our union with
God cannot be accomplished except through suffering. Now, friendship is
the union, the blending of two souls into one: “One heart and one soul…
the same likes and dislikes” (“Cor unum et anima una… unum velle, unum
nolle”). Thus our friendship with God is a perfect union of all our faculties with Him; a union of our mind that subordinates our reason to Reason
by patterning our thoughts after those of God – conforming our way of
thinking to the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church and not to
the novelties of a counterfeit ‘Catholicism’ which are in line with the
principles of Masonic ‘Enlightenment’ (“liberty, equality, fraternity or
brotherhood” and the unending ecumenical search for truth and meaning),
the counterfeit ‘Christianity’ [the religious revolt of the 16th
century: 'Protestantism', cf. our post "The Great Sign in Heaven"] of the Synagogue (service of one’s personal
judgment, service of opinion: “FOR ME…”), and the maxims of the world
(“My way”); a union of our will that causes us to embrace the divine will
– which manifests itself through the Commandments of God and Laws of
the Church, the will of our legitimate superiors (as long as it is not
evil, not contrary to the Commandments of God and His irrevocable
decrees, cf. our post "Obey God, rather than men," not contrary to Catholic Faith and Morals), our "duty of the present moment", all that affects the body (in health or sickness), and all that affects the soul (whether it be of joy or tribulation, of long or brief duration) – as our very own, a union of heart that prompts us to give ourselves to God as He has given Himself to us, My Beloved to me and I to him (Cant.
2.16); a union of activities that causes us to seek first and foremost
the interests of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Church.
Our holy father St. John of the Cross has explained all these means
by which the soul is to be purified, scraped to the bottom in order to
reach this summit of Calvary: this life of divine union. A program of
total mortification is required to break all our bonds, for we have
within us many obstacles which keep us from being entirely moved by God;
and the accomplishment of this work is impossible without suffering.
But active suffering, that is, the mortifications and penances inspired by our personal initiative or enjoined to us by the Holy Church, is not sufficient. We especially need passive suffering. In other words, the Lord Himself must ‘make us suffer’, not only in our body, but also in our soul, because we are so covered with rust, so full of miseries, that our total purification is not possible unless God Himself intervenes directly. To plunge us into passive suffering, is, therefore, one of His greatest works of mercy, a proof of His exceeding love.
When God acts in a soul this way, it is a sign that He wants to bring it to very high perfection. It is precisely in these passive purifying sufferings that the concept of the Cross is realized preeminently.
In “The Living Flame of Love,” our holy father St. John of the Cross
asks why there are so few souls who reach the plenitude of the spiritual
life; and he answers: “It is not because God wants to reserve this
state for a few privileged souls, but because He finds so few souls
disposed to accept the hard task of purification.” These souls our holy
father, in “The Ascent of Mt. Carmel,” likens to “children who kick and
cry and struggle to walk by themselves when their mothers want to carry
them.” Therefore, continues the eminent Doctor of Teresian Carmel in
“The Living Flame of Love,” “He stops purifying them, and they condemn
themselves to mediocrity and advance no farther.” It is impossible to
become united to God without these spiritual sufferings, without bearing
this ‘burden’ of God. Suffering and interior desolation alone enlarge
the powers of the soul and make it capable of embracing God Himself.
“O souls that seek to walk in security and comfort in spiritual
things! If you did but know how necessary it is to suffer and endure in
order to reach this security!” (St. John of the Cross, “The Living Flame
of Love”). Suffering is requisite not only of earthly love, not
only for the good of the soul, but also that the soul may be able to
glorify God and prove its love for Him. It is not a question of
attaining perfection in order to enjoy it – for the perfect soul never
thinks of self – but that the soul may be wholly dedicated to the glory
of God. It is in this sense that we read on the summit of the “Mount of
Perfection” [from the illustration made by St. John of the Cross in his
"The Ascent of Mt. Carmel"]: “Only the honor and glory of God dwell on
this mountain.” Even as the Cross of Jesus was for Him the great
means of rendering to the Father the glory that sinful man had refused
Him since the first Man joined Satan in his pride: “FOR ME… MY WAY,”
so should it be in regard to our cross: by means of suffering, we
should expiate and repair our sins and faults and the sins and faults of
others, in order to give God all the glory due Him.
In addition, as the Cross of Jesus was the supreme proof of His love
for us, our cross, too, should be the finest proof of our love for Him.
The Son of God has revealed His infinite love for us by His most
generous sacrifice of Himself on the Cross – down to the last drops of
His Most Sacred and Precious Blood; in like manner, the reality of our
love is made apparent by the generous acceptance of sufferings out of
love for Him.
The more God sanctifies us, the more He proves His love for us and gives us the opportunity of glorifying Him; but He sanctifies us only by means of the Cross – the great Cross of Jesus Christ through the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass [this, the New 'Catholic Theology' of Vatican II current in 'modern' seminaries frowns upon] to which we must unite our little crosses [this is true and authentic Catholic "participation"; not the Vatican II fad after the manner of the Lutherans and the 'spirited' Pentecostals!].
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| The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass: "... The (sacrifice of the lamb) which you shall offer... everyday for THE PERPETUAL HOLOCAUST.... an oblation of most sweet odor to the Lord" (Num. 28.3,8). "For as often as you shall eat this bread, and drink the chalice, you shall shew the death of the Lord, until He come" (1 Cor. 11.26)." |
Our sanctification then is proportionate to our generous experience of the “burden” of Our Beloved. Sufferings are, even in this sense, a proof of God’s love for us.
And let us also contemplate Our Sorrowful Immaculate Mother at the foot of the Cross. The
sight of our Blessed Mother makes this lesson of the Cross less hard
and less bitter; Her maternal example encourages us to suffer and makes
the road to Calvary easier. God, Who had given Her His
greatest gift of this divine Son, asked, on Calvary, for a return of His
gift, and Our Blessed Mother offered the very center of all the
affections of Her Immaculate Heart and of Her whole life – Jesus Christ –
to the Father with all the love of Her Heart, in complete adherence and
abandonment to the loving and saving designs of God. If we understood all this, how we should love the Crucified and His Cross!
For God so loved the world, AS TO GIVE His only begotten Son... to be a propitiation for our sins (Jn. 3.16; 1 Jn. 4.10)
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