When I survey the wondrous Cross

On which the Prince of Glory died,

My richest gain I count but loss,

And pour contempt on all my pride.

Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,

Save in the death of Christ my God!

All the vain things that charm me most,

I sacrifice them to His blood.

See from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down!

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

His dying crimson, like a robe,

Spreads o’er His body on the tree;

Then I am dead to all the globe,

And all the globe is dead to me.

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.

by Isaac Watts, 1707Pf

 

 

Labor without stopping;

do all the good works you can

while you still have the time.

Saint John of God (1495-1550)

 

 

 

Christ’s words were too literal, and He cleared up too many false interpretations, for any of His hearers to claim that the Eucharist (or Body and Blood He would give) was a mere type or symbol, or that its effects depended upon the subjective dispositions of the receiver.

 

It was Our Lord’s method whenever anyone misunderstood what He said to correct the misunderstanding, as He did when Nicodemus thought “born again” meant re-entering his mother’s womb.

 

But, whenever anyone correctly understood what He said, but found fault with it, He repeated what He said. And in this discourse, Our Lord repeated five times what He had said about His Body and Blood. The full meaning of these words did not become evident until the night before He died. In His last will and testament, He left that which on dying no other man has ever been able to leave, namely, His Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, for the life of the world.

Life Of Christ

Fulton J. Sheen

this article discovered here

 

I shall live and die for the sake of my faith and religion.

I take pride in the Cross of my God and Lord.

Blessed Ignazio Maloyan (1869-1915) martyr

 

When The Exorcism of Emily Rose came out in 2005 most people were not aware that the movie was based on a true story of a young German woman named Anneliese Michel who was possessed for many years and died in 1976 at the age of 23 probably of the possession itself. Her heart-wrenching story is instructive, not so much about the nature of evil, but about how good can be brought out of so much evil, especially when offered for the spiritual benefit of others. I believe that Anneliese Michel’s faithful endurance of such demonic sufferings would qualify as truly heroic.

 

The pious young woman came from a Catholic family in the southern region of Germany and would have been the last person that anyone would have expected to be the victim of a full-fledged possession. Anneliese was the innocent target of a witch’s curse when she was a child, and that was what caused her demonic problems. She lived a so-called “normal” life until her sixteenth birthday when, without warning, she began to experience the oppression of her senses through hearing voices and seeing grotesque faces. From that point on she suffered a series of deepening internal problems which grew worse as the years went on. By her twentieth birthday she was almost fully taken over by the demonic spirits which threw her into catatonic states and caused extremely violent aversions to religious objects as well as other occult phenomena such as speaking in esoteric languages. During the series of exorcisms performed on her over the period of nearly a year, it was discovered that she was possessed by six very powerful demons, one of whom was named Hitler and the strongest of which was named Judas.

 

Anneliese’s heroism throughout this whole ordeal is truly hard to believe. She not only attempted to complete all her school assignments until she was utterly unable to do so, but she was completely accepting of her trials because she knew that there was a deeper meaning in them. In the midst of her sufferings she had visions of Jesus and Mary and learned that the Lord wanted her to offer her intense agony at the hands of demons for two primary intentions: the Catholic Church in Germany and, in particular, the German clergy. In the post-Vatican II era, Germany was rife with clerical dissent and loss of faith: this suffering child of God was praying in a most profound way that no soul would be lost to the true Faith.

 

Needless to say, a real possession is a destructive and desolate experience for the possessed individual, and in the end, Anneliese succumbed to the power of the demons and died just after her 23rd birthday. Some speculate that a combination of misdiagnosed medications and her inability to eat anything during most of her ordeal led to her demise, but ultimately she died, according to her spiritual director, as a victim soul out of love for her people. He called her experience an “expiatory possession,” that is, a suffering for the sins of others. It is evident that God permitted her death in this dramatic way, just as He permitted the death of His only-begotten Son, for the eternal benefit of others and as a witness to the reality of evil in a faithless age.

 

If we look only at her death at a young age or the tragic circumstances of her possession we will not see the meaning of her life or the heroism of her suffering. We have to look beyond the particulars to the fruit of her agony which needs the eyes of faith to see: that is, less than two years after Anneliese died as a victim for the German Church and clergy, a young priest by the name of Fr. Joseph Ratzinger was named Archbishop of Munich, the very region where Anneliese lived, suffered and died.

 

And well, you know the rest of the story.

 

Sincerely Yours in Christ,

 

Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer,

President, Human Life International

 

Volume 01, Number 80 | August 17, 2007

 

 

These words of condemnation were spoken by a British magistrate of her majesty Queen Elizabeth. On Tuesday, March 15, 1586, in the Court of York, Judge George Clinch condemned to death Margaret Middleton Clitherow, a 33-year-old Yorkshire housewife who was pregnant with her fourth child. Her crime was sheltering Roman priests who were “traitors and seducers of the queen’s subjects.”

 

We know many of the details of the life of this heroic martyr, especially her last painful days of imprisonment, from her spiritual director Father John Mush, a seminary priest. Recognizing the holiness of her life and the great inspiration she was to persecuted Catholics throughout Elizabethan England, Mush wrote a detailed biography in the days immediately following her gruesome execution.

 

Margaret Middleton was born during the last years of the reign of Mary Tudor. Her parents were Thomas and Jane Middleton. Her father was a respected businessman­a candlemaker­in the city of York. One of five children, she was brought up Protestant and like the other girls in the family she was not taught to read or write. This did not mean she was a neglected child but that the closing down of the religious orders had all but destroyed the country’s educational system. Few of the girls living in the city of York in those days received any education at all.

 

Margaret lived in turbulent times. Elizabeth came to the throne in 1558. The vast majority of English people were Catholic and wished to remain Catholic. When the new queen threatened to destroy their Church, they shrugged their shoulders and waited for it to all blow over. It took several years for them to realize, when it was too late, that if they wanted to retain their faith, they must be ready to suffer for it. The law clearly stated that the Mass was outlawed and the whole population was ordered to attend the new services in their parish church.

 

The Middleton family accepted the new religion and the Queen as the head of the Church. Her father prospered and became sheriff of York. He died when his daughter was 14.

 

When Margaret was 18, her mother arranged that she marry a Protestant, John Clitherow, who owned his own meat business and became one of the wealthiest men in the city. He was confident that his new wife would join him in worshipping in the Queen’s Church.

 

This she did for the first couple of years of their marriage. At the age of 21, however, the bride returned to the Church of her ancestors and made her profession of faith and allegiance to the Pope of Rome. At the same time John professed his Protestant faith and became a chamberlain in the city of York.

 

The Clitherow family reacted to this difference of religion in the same way that many of the wealthy families did. The husband conformed to the new religion while his wife did not. Throughout their marriage, John paid her fines for not attending church services, even allowed his wife to bring up their children as Catholics and was very careful not to know if the forbidden Popish Mass was being celebrated in his house.

 

John was not hostile to the Church. In fact his brother William was ordained a Catholic priest. Like many others in England of his day, the chamberlain of York probably expected the Catholic faith would return before long and he did not want to be completely on the wrong side of the fence if this should happen. So he did make things as easy as he could for his wife. He was careful to ignore the fact that Father Mush was a frequent visitor and obviously was celebrating Mass for Margaret and her friends.

 

Margaret proved to be a loving wife and mother. She was disturbed by John’s protestations of faith in the Queen’s religion but she still loved him dearly. Speaking of him in later life she remarked, “Know you, I love him next to God in this world. . . . If I have offended my husband in any way, save for my conscience, I ask of God and him forgiveness.” Her husband shared her love. He said that he could wish for no better wife, “except only two faults, and these were, she fasted too much and would not go with him to church.”

 

The Clitherows had three children: Henry, Anne, and the third child William born when she was in prison for failure to attend services at the established church. While in prison, she taught herself to read and write. She always maintained a great rapport with all her children and they grew up as staunch Catholics even though they never knew their mother beyond their twelfth year. Knowing that she could not educate them herself she violated the law by hiring a Catholic tutor, a man named Stapleton. He became responsible for the education of the two younger children and she secretly sent her oldest son to be educated in the Catholic college at Douai in France. She never lived to see the day when her two sons were ordained as priests and her daughter entered religious life.

 

Her home became one of the most important hiding places for fugitive priests in all of England. The Clitherow house was equipped with a secret cupboard where the vestments, the wine and the altar breads were kept. It also had a “priest’s hole” where the fugitive cleric could be hid. When her house was under almost constant surveillance, Margaret hired a room some distance off that also provided a hiding place for the priest. Local tradition among the Yorkshire people said that she also housed her clerical guests right under the noses of the authorities in the Black Swan Inn at Peaseholme Green. Mass, it was said, was celebrated in the inn where the Queen’s agents were lodged.

 

Margaret, meanwhile, was becoming a fearless and very outspoken Catholic.

 

The government was perturbed by the persistence of so many of the people of Yorkshire in the old faith. The area was far removed from London. For a long time past, the Kings of England had appointed a special body called the Council of the North to carry out the royal policy in this remote area of the land. From the reports of government agents, it was clear that the north was solidly Catholic in sentiment, though not always in outward behavior. The change of religion had to be carried out largely by men who were specially sent down by the government for that purpose.

 

Those close to the Queen demanded that the Council of the North crack down with strong measures to make an example of the prominent Catholics in the community. On March 10, 1586, the council summoned the Chamberlain of York, John Clitherow and demanded that he explain the absence of his son abroad. This was a bold move because the chamberlain was a well respected member of the Protestant community. He was outraged and refused to give them any information about the whereabouts or activity of his son Henry who had enrolled in the seminary in France.

 

Margaret was not upset to find out that her husband was summoned. She was sure that the authorities would use the occasion to search their home but she was certain that they would find nothing that would incriminate her or her husband. Mass had been said that morning and the priest had escaped. The faithful Mr. Stapleton was conducting class for a group of children. When the alarm was sounded, the teacher escaped through a window. When the searchers burst open the schoolroom door, they found nothing but a group of children studying their lessons. Had it been only the Clitherow children and their Catholic neighbors involved, the authorities would not have learned very much. The Yorkshire children were strong in their faith and were not easily intimidated.

 

There was in the group a weak spot. There was an older student whom the children considered a foreigner. He was older than all the rest-about 14 years of age. He was Flemish and a stranger to the ways of England and its anti-Catholic laws. Fear showed on his face and the authorities recognized it. They stripped him and threatened him with a flogging. He quickly gave in and told them everything he knew.

 

He showed them everything­where the Mass was said and where the vestments and altar breads were kept. This was more than the searchers had even hoped for. It clearly proved that Mass was being celebrated in the house despite the law. The Flemish boy told them everything he knew and even some things he did not know. He was only too willing to speak and not too accurate in what he said.

 

Quickly the authorities ransacked the house. They carried off all of the incriminating evidence. The two Clitherow children were taken to loyal Protestant families and Margaret was never allowed to see her children again. The servants were arrested and thrown into prison because they were loyal to their mistress. Once again Margaret found herself in prison.

 

When she was brought before the council, she astonished everyone. She was not only fearless, she had a smile on her face. She seemed relieved at being arrested. It was as if she had foreseen the danger and it may have been a relief to have the suspense end when the outcome was known to be inevitable. She was confined with her friend Anne Tesh who was being held for hearing Mass. The two were supportive of each other and confounded their captors with their continued good humor in their jail cell.

 

On the third day of her confinement, the authorities allowed her husband John to visit her briefly. The visit took place in the presence of the jailer. She was never to see her husband again. The meeting had a sobering effect on both.

 

During the days of her confinement, the authorities spread rumors about her throughout the community. One of the priests that said Mass at her home, Father Francis Ingleby was arrested but the Council could not find anyone who could connect him with Margaret. The great difficulty in getting evidence showed how strong was the popular sentiment on the Catholic side.

 

Early in the evening of Monday, March 14, Margaret Clitherow was brought before the judges at Common Hall in the city of York. A large crowd was in the streets and in the court for she was dearly loved by many of the citizens. Her indictment was read and she was asked how she pleaded. In answer she said, “I know of no offense whereof I should confess myself guilty. Having made no offense, I need no trial.”

 

Following her refusal to plead guilty the judges tried to convince her to stand trial. For hours they tried to discredit her but she refused to be shaken. Judge Clinch warned her that if she refused to stand trial, the law would sentence her to a far more painful death than a jury could. The other judges on the panel accused her of crimes of every kind including having intercourse with the priests she harbored. Nothing seemed to move her and the presiding judge sent her back to prison for the night hoping that the solitary confinement would alter her thinking and bring her to her senses.

 

On the next day she was taken back to the Common Hall in the early morning. Judge Clinch reminded her that under the law of Queen Elizabeth, when an accused person refused to make a plea and stand trial before a jury, the accused would be sentenced to what was called “peine forte et dure.” The person was laid naked on the stone floor of an underground cell with a door laid over him and on the door heavy stones were piled. Further weights were piled upon him until he was pressed to death.

 

Margaret refused to make a plea and to stand trial because she did not want her young children called to court. She told her friend Mrs. Tesh that she knew she would be executed in any case and she did not want to have her children forced to give evidence against their mother. Many at the court pleaded with her to change her mind. Even the judge tried to persuade her to no avail.

 

Finally the judge passed sentence that she should be crushed to death as a punishment for having “harbored and maintained Jesuits and seminary priests, traitors to the Queen’s majesty and her laws.”

 

Ten days were allowed to pass between her sentencing and execution. On the day of her execution she was calm and forgiving. When asked to pray for the Queen, she asked God to turn Her Majesty to the Catholic faith. They placed the board upon her and the hired executioners placed the huge stones upon her. Within a quarter of an hour she was dead. The sheriffs left the body under the door from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon. They then buried her body in some waste ground, where they hoped it would never be found.

 

Her death took place on March 25, 1586 on Good Friday.

 

In 1970, Pope Paul VI canonized St. Margaret Clitherow under the charming title of “The Pearl of York.” Her home at #36 The Shambles is on one of the most beautiful streets in her native city. It has become a martyr’s shrine and each year thousands of pilgrims come to pay her homage.

 

Margaret Clitherow was a martyr for her Catholic Faith. She died because she harbored the priests of Christ’s Church and made it possible for them to celebrate the Eucharist for the faithful in England in the time of Queen Elizabeth. It was through the faith and the courage of women like St. Margaret that the Church survived the Great Persecution and survives and flourishes today.

This article appeared in the April 1994 issue of “The Homiletic & Pastoral Review,” 86 Riverside Dr., New York, N.Y. 10024, 212-799-2600, $24.00 per year.

 

 

this article discovered here

 

 

 

Marguerite:

 

Lord, if You will please come to my help, I promise that I shall be faithful to You. And when the driving energy of my love is shattered, I want to remember that Your Love is a perpetual martyrdom. Do I have the right to think about myself and even about the Little Souls before thinking about what people make You endure, especially those who call themselves Your friends? Being betrayed by those we love so much, is this not the cruelest thing in the world?

 

Oh Jesus, forgive the bitterness which lies in the depths of my heart. May it be wiped away by your Love. This is the right time to crucify in me the nothingness which I am, to console Your broken Heart which encounters nothing but indifference, betrayal and the blackest ingratitude.

 

And they go so far as to try to stop me from expressing the feelings that oppress me and from writing down the complaints of my Divine Friend!

 

We have a mission to carry on with Jesus, the Lamb.  Behold the Lamb of God, who continues to take away the sin of the world.  Jesus taught His Apostles this.  He said, “When you pray (this was right at Ascension time), wherever you go, in My name preach penance for the remission of sins.  Preach the Cross.  Tell My people not to be afraid of suffering because this is how we eradicate sin.  This is how we take away sin.”

 

We’re called to live Jesus and His Cross because this is living His agape love to the fullest.  Pain is useless if it’s not united with the pain of Jesus.  So with any kind of pain or suffering, physically or of the heart especially,  unite it with the suffering of Jesus and then that pain becomes powerful to save souls.

It becomes redemptive.

 

And so God is calling us to follow Him.  He’s calling us to evangelize.  Some days it might be following Him right into the enemy’s camp.  It might be to follow Him into our own family unit and bring our family members and put them in the chalice because maybe they are not coming to the Cross.  Maybe they don’t even want to know Jesus, but the Blood of the Lamb is what defeated Satan, and it’s what defeats Satan today.  The Blood of the Lamb is on our altars everyday—the same Blood that was on Calvary.  Bring your loved ones, bring those who you don’t even know very well, and put them in the Blood of the Lamb.  That Blood will cleanse the sin and will heal them.   The Blood of the Lamb will give them new life.  This is a very simple way to intercede at daily Mass.

 

Jesus Himself speaks to us at Mass.  When that chalice with the Blood of the Lamb is lifted up, He says, “Do this in memory of Me.” In other words, “You do this.  You lay down your lives now for others.  You love one another as I have loved you.  You do this in remembrance of Me.”  Love makes us vulnerable so our hearts will be pierced from time to time at this level.  There is no protection for a heart that’s loving and open to receive love, and so we will experience the piercing of the heart, but we can use it as it was used on Calvary.  When the heart of Jesus was pierced and that blood and water flowed out, He was giving life.  He was giving life to all the sacraments of the Church.  He was giving life to humanity again.

 

Our Lady’s heart was also pierced there also.  It was the fulfillment of Simeon’s prophetic word to her, “Your own heart a sword shall pierce so that thoughts of other hearts can be revealed.”  And so we see how these graces are working at Pentecost.  The pierced heart of Jesus is releasing that new life, the Spirit, and the pierced heart of Mary is opening the hearts to receive the Gift.  The twin hearts of Jesus and Mary always work together.  And so if your heart is pierced, know that the Spirit is coming and someone is receiving that (Him?), but also that someone is getting the grace from your pierced heart to receive the grace that is coming.

 

I would like to close with “You are Sacrament”:

 

“You are sacrament.

 

You are a sign of the gentleness of God.

 

You are a symbol of the smile of Divinity.

 

Oh do you not know your sacramental power?

 

The transforming power of the Church is yours, carried in the delicate vessel of your words, your prayers, your heart.

 

You are sacrament.

 

You smile and through your eyes must radiate the Son of God.  For you are sacrament.

 

You warmly clasp a hand and the wheat-grains of a heart are changed to Christ.

 

For you are sacrament.

 

You endure, with spirit-filled courage, the wood of the Cross, which is warmed by the Body of Christ.

 

For indeed you are sacrament.

 

You must love and in your love the world will encounter God.  Oh what price the emptying of the vessel that you may serve as instrument, as sacramental channel!

 

It is the price of parenthood,

 

of bringing forth life in the Spirit and in the Body,

 

being willing to die to your own desires to sacrifice,

 

to be vulnerable.

 

It is the price of parenthood, nurturing development in pain and patience and in prayer.

 

It is the price of giving birth.

 

It is the price of giving birth.

 

Your life consumed on a paten

 

that the life of Christ may be chaliced.

 

Is the price too high?

 

Is it too high to be sacrament?

 

Do you not know that love knows no counting,

 

that fire does not measure as it consumes.

 

So if in being sacrament I house the God that I channel,

 

then Lord bless the water of my openness, touch my earthen shell, and ordain me, God, with the oil of joy.”

 

This is what Mary experienced in this great mystery.  She is evangelizing.  She is proclaiming in her whole personhood the greatness of the Lord.  “Because He who is mighty has done great things for me” (Luke 1:49).  He who is mighty is doing great things for each of us.  And today we experience the words that Elizabeth gave her, that we, too, are blessed, blessed, ever so blessed, because like Mary, we have chosen to be sacrament.  God bless you all!

 

Excerpt from “Sacrament of Love,” Syracuse, NY, 2000.

 

this article discovered here

 

 

 

 

We will do very much more if we are plunged into interior and exterior darkness, filled with sorrow, weakness, exhaustion, without consolation, persecuted at every step, surrounded by constant failure, abandoned, ridiculed, scoffed at, as was Jesus on the Cross — provided that we want by all means to draw all people to God.

 

Saint Maximilian Kolbe (1894-1941)

 

Recently, a reader wrote me to say, “I have Jewish friends who ask, ‘How can Jesus be the New Adam and the Messiah when it is painfully clear that everyone is still suffering from Original Sin? How can he have conquered death when the penalty for Adam’s sin­ death ­is still being inflicted on everybody?’ Is this a common issue for Jewish people? How do I respond to it?”

 

It sort of is and sort of isn’t. Catholics need to bear in mind that, in the grand scheme of things, we are the oddities in the religious world picture because we have a Magisterium and tend to presume everybody else does too. So we often talk about “the” Jewish notion of this or “the” Protestant notion of that or “the” Muslim view of the other, when in reality there is no monolithic Judaism, Protestantism or Islam. In the case of Judaism, the old proverb is “Two Jews, three opinions”: testament to a proud and lively heritage of intellectual combativeness that has produced a huge number of great thinkers. (By the way, if it comes to it, there’s no monolithic Catholic faith either. As Chesterton noted, Catholics agree about everything. It is only everything else they disagree about.)

 

So far as I know, modern Judaism does not affirm the notion of original sin at all. That’s an idea that comes out of the Western Christian tradition as a result of the fifth century Pelagian heresy. Pelagius said, “Jesus is our model. If you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and imitate him perfectly, you can save yourself without grace.” The Church’s reply, following Augustine (who was following Paul, who was following Jesus) is “Apart from Christ, you can do nothing.” We are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners “in Adam” as Paul put it. We can’t save ourselves. We need the help of Christ’s Spirit.

 

Curiously, this notion of “corporate personality”, of being “in Adam” (and, for the Christian, “in Christ”) is deeply Jewish. The prophets are full of the notion that the nation of Israel and the man Jacob are somehow bound up with one another. Likewise, other figures from the patriarchal period (Ishmael, Esau, Ham, Ephraim, Judah, etc.) are somehow “summed up” in their descendants. So the concept of original sin, while not a feature of modern Judaism, is deeply rooted in this peculiarly Old Testament way of seeing the human family. Christianity simply elaborates on it and holds that we are bound up, not only with the primordial tasks of Adam (marriage, fruitfulness, rule, work, and worship) but in his fall as well.

 

That said, the question is: if modern Judaism doesn’t buy original sin, why is your friend appealing to it? It would appear he is grafting onto a specifically Jewish critique of Christianity bits and pieces of Christian teaching that are not really part of the original Jewish argument. The specifically Jewish critique is summed up in this old rabbinic story:

 

The student of Rabbi Ben-Ezra rushed in excitedly and announced, “Rabbi! The Messiah has come!” Rabbi Ben-Ezra put his head out the window and looked up and down the street. “I see no change,” he remarked, and went on with his business.

 

“If Jesus is the Messiah, why is the world the same?” is a good, concrete, classically Jewish question. The appeal to Jesus’ seeming failure to fix original sin appears to be an attempt to show that, even on Christian terms, the Faith refutes itself since Jesus does not appear to do even what Christians say he does, much less what Jewish conceptions of the Messiah say he was supposed to do. 

 

The problem is this: the argument seems to me to fall between two stools by appealing to the Christian category of original sin because it fails to engage what Jesus and the Christians following him actually teach about Jesus’ conquest of death and sin. For, of course, Christianity has never said that Christ would magically eradicate sin from the world or stop physical death. On the contrary, it has always made clear that sin is bound to come into the world “but woe to him by whom it comes”. It has always insisted that it is appointed unto man once to die and, after that, the judgment. As Jesus himself said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Christianity is not about the cancellation of death, but about the transformation of death. It has likewise always insisted that the main thing Adam suffered was spiritual death: the loss of God.

 

So it is a mistake to try to prove that Jesus cannot forgive and heal original sin.  Original sin is indeed cured by baptism, but it does not follow that we are free of concupiscence, that is, the disordered appetites, darkened intellect, and weakened will that result from original sin. These remain and constitute the field of battle on which we express our dignity as children of Adam and co-creators with Christ of our own salvation. The curse of Adam is transformed into blessing by our suffering with Christ in the labor of cooperating with grace not only in our salvation but in the salvation of the world.

 

This requires grace to see, much as the crucifixion requires grace to see properly. The earliest Jewish critique of Christian messianic claims is blunt, concrete, and seemingly unanswerable: “Cursed is he who is hanged on a tree.” To Jewish eyes this looked like a slam dunk rebuttal of Jesus’ Messiahship. Deuteronomy pronounced the curse. Jesus was hanged on a tree. End of story.

 

But Paul, with the eyes of faith, realized that this paradoxically confirmed Jesus’ Messiahship because it pointed to the fact that he who had no sin became sin for us and bore our curse, just as Isaiah 53 said he would. He was pierced for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. 

 

In the same way, the transformation of Adam’s curse and death into life and blessing also requires faith­faith in the Risen Christ, who is the down payment on the final conquest of death and sin that will take place only when all things are put under his feet at the Last Judgment. This too is a deeply Jewish idea known as “The Last Day”. What the Christian revelation has made clear is that the Last Day will be the day in which Christ, who has already endured the worst we can throw at him, will come again to dispense perfect mercy and justice, just as the prophets foretold. Till then, we have the grace and glory of being active agents in his transformation of the world and of ourselves by his Spirit. The curse of Adam has been reversed in Christ, who lives forever. But the transformation of the rest of us is something we must participate in freely for it to benefit us­and that process will not be done till the Last Day.

 

(This piece was first published in the National Catholic Register.)

 

Mark Shea is Senior Content Editor for Catholic Exchange and a weekly columnist for the National Catholic Register. You may visit his website at www.mark-shea.com check out his blog, Catholic and Enjoying It!, or purchase his books and tapes here.

 

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  The Lord was lowered from my Cross into the arms of His Blessed Mother. I am left standing — stunned in all that has happened. With the greatest of sorrow I reflect upon this grave injustice.

  Lord, this painful, horrible road You and I traveled, has ended here on Calvary. In this place of horrific surroundings, You were forced to carry me on this journey of endurance, suffering and agony. The heavy weight of me on Your body, has torn Your flesh: the bones of Your shoulder raw against my wood. We fell down into the dirt. Your enemies beat You and whipped You. With each step, droplets of Your Precious Blood fell from Your inflicted body. We fell down a second time, then a third. Each breath of inhaling torment has brought us closer to the Crucifixion.

 

  On this mountain of Calvary, the ones who hated You — to inflict more pain — took Your Arms and stretched them to the very ends of my limbs, snapping Your bones; and with huge spikes nailed Your Hands and Feet to me. I felt Your pain of agony — not in my wood — but from Your very Heart. You were affixed to me in hatred, but I held You with the greatest of love, holding onto all Your parts, all Your suffering. All I could do, was to hold You upward to Your Father. My hands held Your Hands. My feet embraced Your Feet. For further humiliation, a sign of mockery was placed upon my Cross, and with a spike mounted onto my forehead.

 

  In this extension of suffering, You kept whispering: “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The thorns from Your crown, pierced my wood, my face, my heart. In Your agony, I felt Your trembling, Your fear — waiting, waiting for all of it to end. I could not see Your eyes, but I felt them burning into my wood.

 

  I could feel Your Spirit depart from You; Your limp body rested upon me. I held you; I just held You, as Your Compassion melted into my wood. The mist of sorrow flowed from me — tears of my Cross intermixed with Your Tears and Precious Blood.

  We were cast in an embrace together, frozen in time — Your life extinguished and carried away. And when the lance was thrust into Your side, it pierced the Blood and Water of Your Mercy: pouring out, immersing all mankind forevermore. In this tragic time of bonded togetherness, I know, I know what love, really is.

 

  I remain standing, a bystander, a shadow in this misery; alone, I am devastated. The splinters of my wood embrace pieces of Your Flesh. The Blood and Suffering remain on me, splattered all about the face of my Cross. I hold the mark of Your Body on my limbs. I would not be of any significance if I did not know You — for the grains of my wood hold the Stigmata of Your nail marks, Your suffering, Your Passion. Your Spirit is infused into my Cross: for I am not just a piece of wood or tree, but I am Thy Holy Cross — the “wooden bridge to Heaven.”

 

  As a reminder of our Lord’s Love and Sacrifice, there will be many replicas of me: a Cross with the same presence of Spirit. Embrace it with passion — with all your heart — for our Lord did the very same. And when you bless yourself with the Sign Of The Cross, know in your heart and soul the significance of this blessing. With great reverence, you are embracing the pain, the suffering and sacrifice of Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Yet with some, this blessing is applied with the wave of the hand, quickly and thoughtless — like chasing flies away. Is this how you present yourself to the Lord, as an empty gesture? Think of this as a baton for the flow of the Spirit — reverent, soft and gentle — for this is the punctuation mark of your Faith.

  With love, with compassion, with tears of your heart: to apply a blessing with less than this, is like an instrument without notes to make the music of a song, a violin without the bow — empty of the potential for God’s grace and presence.

 

  When you bless yourself, this is a reunion of your heart and soul uplifting substance of fragrance to Our Lord Jesus Christ on His Holy Cross.

 

  IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER,

  AND OF THE SON,

  AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT.

  AMEN.

Robert J.Varrick

 

The early Christian basilicas in Rome, the Cathedrals of the Middle Ages, the Gothic Revival churches in 20th century America and the more contemporary constructions of recent years all share the same purpose.  The church building is meant to be “a sacred building destined for divine worship” (Code of Canon Law, 1214).  More than just a place where we gather, the church building makes visible the Church living in this place, the dwelling of God with us reconciled and united in Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1180).

 

Central to every Catholic church, therefore, is the altar on which the Eucharist is celebrated.  For the Eucharist is the summit and source of the Church’s life.  The Eucharist makes the Church. And the Church makes the Eucharist.  No Eucharist, no Church.  The Eucharist is the Church’s most sacred treasure, because the Eucharist is the Lord Jesus.

 

So great is the mystery of the Eucharist that it cannot be straight-jacketed into a single concept or explanation.  Jesus gifted the Church with the Eucharist at the Last Supper.  On the evening before he died, he celebrated God’s deliverance of Israel and the redemption he himself was accomplishing for all.  He did this in the context of the Passover meal.

 

First, the very giving of the Eucharist reminds us of the structure of a meal. “Take, eat… Then he took a cup and… gave it to them, saying: Drink from it, all of you” (Matthew 26:26,27).  The Eucharist is the meal in which we enjoy table fellowship with the Lord.  When we worthily receive the Eucharist, we enter into a profound communion with Jesus.  He abides in us and we in him (cf. John 15:4).

 

Israel celebrated communion sacrifices in which part of the victim was offered to God and another portion given to the faithful to eat.  Thus Israel expressed her desire to be one with God.  When Moses ratified the covenant with Israel, Moses, Aaron and his two sons Nadab and Abihu, along with the seventy elders, went up the mountain.  In a very rare sentence in the entire Old Testament, we are told, “they actually gazed on God and then ate and drank” (Exodus 24:11).  At the very birth of God’s chosen people, the meal on the mountain prefigures the fellowship which God wishes to establish with all his children.  Today, as we sit down at the Lord’s Table and eat and drink in his sight, we enter that fellowship, sharing in the very life of God himself.

 

Second, all the narratives of the Last Supper (Matthew 26:26-28: Mark 14:22-23: Luke 22:19-20; and 1 Corinthians 11:23-25), help us understand the Eucharist as not just a meal but as sacrifice.  Jesus gives his body broken for us and his blood poured out for us.  Jesus is the Suffering Servant who is offering himself in sacrifice, pouring out his blood for the new covenant.  He offers himself in place of humanity and for the salvation of all (cf. Isaiah 42:1-9; 49:8).

 

The Cross begins at the Supper (cf. 1 Corinthians 11:26).  In the Upper Room, Jesus makes present in an unbloody manner his self-offering on the Cross.  In every Eucharist, Christ makes present to us anew that same sacrifice offered once for all on Golgotha.  The Eucharist is sacrifice, not repeated again and again, but the one sacrifice of the Cross made present to us in every age.

 

Third, at the same time that the Eucharist makes present what occurred in the past, it also impels us towards the future.  The Liturgy itself reminds us of this in the acclamation following the consecration: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”  The Eucharist is an eschatological event.

 

St. John Chrysostom reminds us of this.  He says, “For when you see the Lord sacrificed, laid upon the altar, and the priest standing and praying over the victim, and all the worshippers empurpled with that precious blood, can you then think that you are still among men, and standing upon the earth?  Are you not, on the contrary, straightway translated to heaven, and casting out every carnal thought from the soul, do you not, with disembodied spirit and pure reason, contemplate the things which are in heaven?” (De Sacerdotio, III, 4).

 

Christ who will come again at the end of time comes to us in every Eucharist.  This eschatological aspect makes the Eucharist an event that draws us up into heaven.  Thus, the Eucharist fills our life journey with hope.  In every Eucharist, we enter the Holy of Holies, the Body of Christ, and we are sanctified (cf. Heb 90:11-14).  The Eucharist is the privileged place where life becomes sacred.  The Eucharist makes our life a sacred adventure of ever-deepening communion with God.

 

 

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