About the Church
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Holy Mass & R-CR Panoramas – I
Christ Renews His Sacrifice at Every Mass
I have been asked to speak on the valor and importance of the Holy Mass and offer my consideration on the topic. I do this with pleasure, because it is an always timely and always fundamental topic.
To have an idea of the extraordinary plans and designs of God, it is enough to just open a window and look outside. Everything in the natural world gives us an idea of the greatness of God. This suffices for us to have an idea of who God is.
But, in a more elevated order of things, God manifests Himself to us in a more magnificent way. Let us consider the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Since Our Lord Jesus Christ is the God-Man, any shedding of His Blood has an infinite value, quite literally, for a single drop of His Blood could redeem the human race. A simple drop of the Blood that He shed in the circumcision would have sufficed to redeem mankind.
Or, for example, in a small "accident" in the Holy House of Loreto – with "accident" between quotation marks because with the omniscient and omnipotent God there is no accident – He could have pricked the tip of His finger with something like a nail when He was still a Child. A drop of His Blood could have spurted forth and, with this, He could have worked the redemption of mankind.
All the Angels in Heaven would adore that drop of Blood! He would offer this Blood to the Eternal Father. Our Lady and St. Joseph, transfixed with emotion, would be there. Our Lady would certainly have collected this drop of Blood in some very precious fabric providentially provided in her poverty, and atop that drop of Blood the greatest cathedral in the world would be constructed!
Pilgrims from all over the world would come to adore that drop of Blood shed by the Child Jesus. The human race was redeemed, Heaven was open to men, He could give the order for the souls of the righteous who were in Limbo to issue forth. Then, after spending some time with men on earth, He would ascend to Heaven in unspeakable joy – accompanied by all the righteous and the dead who had died in justice until then.
Certainly among them and in the first rank would be the glorious Patriarch St. Joseph, between Adam and Eve, the parents of the human race, who, as you know, are canonized by the Church and are in Heaven despite their transgression that so disturbed our tranquility.
Our Lord could have redeemed mankind in this way, but He chose not to do so. He desired to go through all of that unspeakable Passion about which we all know. And it is quite literally unspeakable, that is, it cannot be adequately described, there is no description that can give an exact idea of how much pain He suffered in both Soul and Body before He finally breathed forth His last breath.
Then, after He expired, He still wanted to pour out that last stream, that mixture of water and blood that was in His Sacred Heart and from this open flank the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church was born.
This consideration shows us that Our Lord Jesus Christ might have done things in a much simpler way; yet, by a design and a perfection very different from the modern spirit, He wanted the river to take a long and difficult turn to reach the end.
The Descent of Our Lord from the Cross
So then, Our Lord Jesus Christ expires and He is taken down from the Cross. The blasphemies cease, the populace disperses, and adoration begins. It is a public adoration because since the time when Our Lady was at the foot of the Cross, the adoration for Him as Redeemer never ceased even for an instant. Hers was / is an adoration of such perfection that the adoration of all men and all Angels, from the beginning of the Earth to the Day of Judgment, cannot be compared with Our Lady’s adoration at the foot of the Cross.
This public adoration was externalized by acts: Our Lord was placed on Her lap, then she began to prepare His Body according to the Jewish rituals, his Body was anointed with precious perfumes where there were open sores – and He was covered with sores! – and then He was transported in solitude and darkness to the site of the Sepulcher, where He laid for three days and three nights.
But, everything has an end ... everything except God. For this reason, after some time passed, the last ray of light that had penetrated the sepulcher – a torch perhaps carried out by Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus or the virgin Apostle – was gone. Inside the tomb everything was drenched in a profound darkness...
At a certain moment, after the light had long disappeared and, therefore, was most unlikely to reappear, a tremendous light flooded the Holy Sepulcher of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Whence did this light come? Did someone pull away the stone? But what a huge stone, impossible to budge! No, it was a light that comes from God, before Whom stones, rocks, mountains and distances are all nothing.
It is His most holy Soul, which was hypostatically united with His Body during this whole time from His Death to the Resurrection. It was His most holy Soul which had been in places we do not know and done good things we shall only know on Judgment Day, when all things will gloriously be known. It seems to me impossible for you not to feel what I am feeling now – a great curiosity to know these things...
One thing is for certain, He was in Limbo. To the unspeakable delight of all the souls who were there, He brought them up to date on everything that had happened, explained to them the History of the World as it was, as it was not, etc. Of course these souls in Limbo already knew that He was the God-Man. St. Joseph had already told them this and more... The news report of St. Joseph in Limbo must have been extraordinary.
Then, that certain moment finally arrived when Jesus Christ Himself came and told them things that St. Joseph did not know. You can imagine the joy and celebration at His entry into Limbo and His attitude towards all those souls who had died with perfect contrition and who now received Him there.
From Limbo He returned to the Sepulcher. And thus we have that brilliant ray of light...
The Sacrifice of Calvary is perpetuated with the Holy Mass
The Sacrifice ended, the suffering ended, the Cross also ended. What an illusion! God does not do anything in this simplified modern way. The things of God have colossal twists and charming turns, magnificent turns, because God is too glorious and elevated to be so simplistic. In His glorious simplicity, He gathers in Himself all perfections, even the perfections which our limited intellect cannot begin to conceive, and in Him they come together in perfect harmony.
And it so happens that, by His design, the Sacrifice of the Cross did not end. Why? That Sacrifice was historically over. But, when He instituted the Holy Mass, He gave to the Apostles – that is, to the Bishops and to the priests that these Bishops ordain – the power to renew the Holy Sacrifice of the Cross in an unbloody way in the Holy Mass. The Mass is the renewal of the Sacrifice without the shedding of His Blood.
And with the expansion of the Catholic Church throughout the world and the growth in the number of priests – unfortunately a much smaller increase than would be desired – there are still so many Masses said that there is not a moment when a Mass is not being celebrated somewhere on the face of the earth.
Therefore, uninterruptedly, Our Lord is in the bosom of the Holy Trinity, in the splendor of the greatest glory, re-offering His Passion and Death to the Eternal Father and to the Holy Trinity.
For this end He has the priest who celebrates the Mass and who serves as His minister in this sense: The essence of the Mass, the act in which par excellence the Sacrifice of the Cross is renewed, is the Act of Consecration. Catholic doctrine teaches that when the priest speaks the words of Consecration, in fact he lends his voice to Our Lord Jesus Christ: The One who speaks is Jesus Christ. So intimate is his union with Our Lord Jesus Christ that when the priest speaks, the Man-God Himself speaks through his lips.
Continued
A single drop of blood spillled by Our Lord at the Circumcision or in some minor ‘accident’ in the Holy House, could have sufficed to redeem mankind
But, in a more elevated order of things, God manifests Himself to us in a more magnificent way. Let us consider the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Since Our Lord Jesus Christ is the God-Man, any shedding of His Blood has an infinite value, quite literally, for a single drop of His Blood could redeem the human race. A simple drop of the Blood that He shed in the circumcision would have sufficed to redeem mankind.
Or, for example, in a small "accident" in the Holy House of Loreto – with "accident" between quotation marks because with the omniscient and omnipotent God there is no accident – He could have pricked the tip of His finger with something like a nail when He was still a Child. A drop of His Blood could have spurted forth and, with this, He could have worked the redemption of mankind.
All the Angels in Heaven would adore that drop of Blood! He would offer this Blood to the Eternal Father. Our Lady and St. Joseph, transfixed with emotion, would be there. Our Lady would certainly have collected this drop of Blood in some very precious fabric providentially provided in her poverty, and atop that drop of Blood the greatest cathedral in the world would be constructed!
Pilgrims from all over the world would come to adore that drop of Blood shed by the Child Jesus. The human race was redeemed, Heaven was open to men, He could give the order for the souls of the righteous who were in Limbo to issue forth. Then, after spending some time with men on earth, He would ascend to Heaven in unspeakable joy – accompanied by all the righteous and the dead who had died in justice until then.
Christ desired to suffer & give the last drop of His Precious Blood as an example for mankind
Our Lord could have redeemed mankind in this way, but He chose not to do so. He desired to go through all of that unspeakable Passion about which we all know. And it is quite literally unspeakable, that is, it cannot be adequately described, there is no description that can give an exact idea of how much pain He suffered in both Soul and Body before He finally breathed forth His last breath.
Then, after He expired, He still wanted to pour out that last stream, that mixture of water and blood that was in His Sacred Heart and from this open flank the Holy Roman Apostolic Catholic Church was born.
This consideration shows us that Our Lord Jesus Christ might have done things in a much simpler way; yet, by a design and a perfection very different from the modern spirit, He wanted the river to take a long and difficult turn to reach the end.
The Descent of Our Lord from the Cross
So then, Our Lord Jesus Christ expires and He is taken down from the Cross. The blasphemies cease, the populace disperses, and adoration begins. It is a public adoration because since the time when Our Lady was at the foot of the Cross, the adoration for Him as Redeemer never ceased even for an instant. Hers was / is an adoration of such perfection that the adoration of all men and all Angels, from the beginning of the Earth to the Day of Judgment, cannot be compared with Our Lady’s adoration at the foot of the Cross.
Our Lady gave the perfect public adoration of Christ after His death
But, everything has an end ... everything except God. For this reason, after some time passed, the last ray of light that had penetrated the sepulcher – a torch perhaps carried out by Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus or the virgin Apostle – was gone. Inside the tomb everything was drenched in a profound darkness...
At a certain moment, after the light had long disappeared and, therefore, was most unlikely to reappear, a tremendous light flooded the Holy Sepulcher of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Whence did this light come? Did someone pull away the stone? But what a huge stone, impossible to budge! No, it was a light that comes from God, before Whom stones, rocks, mountains and distances are all nothing.
It is His most holy Soul, which was hypostatically united with His Body during this whole time from His Death to the Resurrection. It was His most holy Soul which had been in places we do not know and done good things we shall only know on Judgment Day, when all things will gloriously be known. It seems to me impossible for you not to feel what I am feeling now – a great curiosity to know these things...
Christ descended to Limbo to free the waiting souls
Then, that certain moment finally arrived when Jesus Christ Himself came and told them things that St. Joseph did not know. You can imagine the joy and celebration at His entry into Limbo and His attitude towards all those souls who had died with perfect contrition and who now received Him there.
From Limbo He returned to the Sepulcher. And thus we have that brilliant ray of light...
The Sacrifice of Calvary is perpetuated with the Holy Mass
The Sacrifice ended, the suffering ended, the Cross also ended. What an illusion! God does not do anything in this simplified modern way. The things of God have colossal twists and charming turns, magnificent turns, because God is too glorious and elevated to be so simplistic. In His glorious simplicity, He gathers in Himself all perfections, even the perfections which our limited intellect cannot begin to conceive, and in Him they come together in perfect harmony.
Christ Himself speaks by the priest
the words of the Consecration
And with the expansion of the Catholic Church throughout the world and the growth in the number of priests – unfortunately a much smaller increase than would be desired – there are still so many Masses said that there is not a moment when a Mass is not being celebrated somewhere on the face of the earth.
Therefore, uninterruptedly, Our Lord is in the bosom of the Holy Trinity, in the splendor of the greatest glory, re-offering His Passion and Death to the Eternal Father and to the Holy Trinity.
For this end He has the priest who celebrates the Mass and who serves as His minister in this sense: The essence of the Mass, the act in which par excellence the Sacrifice of the Cross is renewed, is the Act of Consecration. Catholic doctrine teaches that when the priest speaks the words of Consecration, in fact he lends his voice to Our Lord Jesus Christ: The One who speaks is Jesus Christ. So intimate is his union with Our Lord Jesus Christ that when the priest speaks, the Man-God Himself speaks through his lips.
Continued
Posted on February 22, 2023
______________________
______________________
 Volume I |
 Volume II |
 Volume III |
 Volume IV |
 Volume V |
 Volume VI |
 Volume VII |
 Volume VIII |
 Volume IX |
 Volume X |
 Volume XI |
 Special Edition |