The Redemption

It was bearing His Cross that He came--weighted down under the burden of our sins. He climbed Calvary's hill and reddened it with His blood. He was barbarously crucified on a Cross, and died between two thieves.

Let us look for a moment at our suffering Savior. Taking place before our horrified gaze is the drama that dominates the world. Christ was "made sin" for us, writes Saint Paul.

On the high hill of Calvary, overlooking the world, a terrible struggle is taking place between Love and Hate--a struggle of unheard-of force. As a result of this fearsome combat, Hate dies in the blood of his immolated Victim. The last words of Christ are a shout of triumph: "Father, it is consummated."

Love has conquered Hate.

Sin is now in full flight. A moment ago, an enormous tidal wave, make up of all the crimes of earth, had sought to engulf within its corrupt depths Him who offered Himself as the Life of the World. Now, Life descends victorious from Calvary, driving back Sin to its ultimate retrenchments. God's plan now unfolds in all its majesty--the return to the Father, to the Father's House.

How may we bring about this return? By following Christ the Way, in what is to be henceforth His sorrowful way. "If anyone wishes to follow Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me." Integrated into Christ by Baptism, I (and not somebody else) ought to die to self, an live the life of Christ. "Christ died for all; that they also who live, may not now live to themselves, but unto Him Who died for them, and rose again" (2 Cor 5:15).

With Saint Paul we should say, "Those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, I fill up in my flesh, for His body, which is the Church" (Col 1:24).

If our good works, sacrifices, and sufferings are to count for eternity and be pleasing to God, it is necessary for us (as we have seen above) to be united to Christ. It is through Him, and with Him, and in Him that we become recipients of God's loving-kindness and mercy.

Our union with Christ, our integration into His Mystical Body, is effected by the sacraments. It is by Baptism that we are introduced into Christ's mystical family. It is through Baptism that we receive divine life; become adopted sons of God the Father; brothers of Jesus Christ; temples of the Holy Spirit, and heirs of heaven!

But how should we offer up--following our Lord's example--our adoration, thanksgiving, satisfactions, and petitions to God? How should we nourish the divine life within us?

By means of the Mass--the Sacrifice of the Mystical Body.

Statement of Youth to the UN and the World

This email received recently needs immediate action:

Dear Colleague,

Radical pro-abortion youth have written a document that the UN General Assembly is considering accepting. This would be disastrous. The document was written under the careful scrutiny of the UN Population Fund and International Planned Parenthood Federation. It calls for all the usual craziness: abortion on demand, comprehensive sex education…all for kids!

A group of smart young people have drafted a counter document that we will present to the UN later this month or early next month. This document will show the UN that radical youth DO NOT TALK FOR ALL YOUTH!

In order to make the necessary big splash, we need as many signatures as we can get. We need you to please sign THIS document right now and then send this note to everyone in your address book? Will you put this email up on Facebook? Will you circulate it among all of your family and friends.

I am often asked what you can do to help our cause at the UN. Here is something you can do that will make a HUGE DIFFERENCE!

UN delegations have requested our help in countering the radical youth document. Your signature on THIS document will help good pro-life delegations fight back against the radical pro-abortionists who want to undermine the morals of our children.

Act now and sign THIS document and then send this email to everyone you know.

Time is running out. We need 50,000 names in three weeks!

Sincerely,

Austin Ruse
President/C-FAM
Editor/Friday Fax

Christ's Intervention & The Incarnation

At this tragic moment in the history of humanity when the Blessed Trinity could have, conceivably, left us in our state of hopeless misery, Jesus intervened: "Father, these men are for Me the sign and expression of Thy love. They are My children. They are Mine, for it was for My sake that you gave them life and being. Never will I abandon them! Since they are incapable of knowing My joy, I am determined to share their misery."

Christ was to have come in glory like the bridegroom whose arrival on the wedding day is joyously awaited by the wedding guests. Now His coming will take place under the reign of Sin; in a body capable of being crushed by suffering, with a heart that affliction will overwhelm, He will come to destroy sin, this "wall of separation" between God and man--between man and man, He will reconcile in His blood heaven and earth. He will unite the peoples.

One day, in the long procession of men groping in the shadow of death, Christ appeared. To this poor, purblind race of ours, He revealed the Father's wondrous plan. "The Father Himself loves you.... He has not abandoned you.... I am your Savior.... I am Life."

"He Who Prays Is Never Alone"

Thank you to His Excellency, Archbishop Timothy Dolan (New York) for this brief but beautiful meditation on prayer!

The Break in the Harmony of the Divine Plan

Alas, man is free to destroy God's harmonious plan! Everything is in equilibrium, because everything tends toward God. All things cohere, because all things are submissive to the Author of life and being. But this adhesion to God is effected in a free act of love. The freedom with which man is adorned, gives to the entire creation an incomparable majesty. God thus receives a praise that is spontaneous. This very freedom, however, exposes the one enjoying it to immense peril. Let man but once refuse to spread forth his hands in a gesture of oblation, and the whole order of things falls apart. But one day man, in a gesture of pride and egoism, rejected his priesthood. His role of mediator no longer satisfied him. Man "would be like God." Through his lips, Satan once more uttered his cry of rage, "I will not serve!"

By his refusal, man shattered the universe. For the universe rested on man as the arch on the keystone. The entire universe turned against man its betrayer. In chorus, it hurled back into the teeth of man the cry that man had dared to address to God, "I will not serve!"

First of all, man's own body revolted. Man, terror-stricken, suddenly beheld within himself the unleashing of sinful passions. Henceforth, seven fetters, which theology is later to designate by the title of "Capital Sins," will shackle his formerly free impulses--Adam and Eve "perceive themselves to be naked."

Man is deeply stricken in the very harmony of his being: "I will multiply your sorrows and your conceptions; in sorrow shall you bring forth children."

Social discord now corresponds to inner imbalance. "You shall be under your husband's power, and he shall have dominion over you."

Looming up on the horizon, in addition to these "domestic squabbles" are quarrels between families, wars between city and city, between nation and nation, world war, revolution.

The animal kingdom, over which man formerly reigned, rises up in its turn. The earth itself refuses to cooperate with man. Only at the cost of a struggle, will man be able to wrest from it miserably a few meager fruits: "Cursed is the earth in your work. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you."

Man is broken, disoriented. Suffering is to be, henceforth, his earthly portion. "In the sweat of your face shall you eat bread.... In sorrow shall you bring forth children."

Man created to be the friend of Christ, has gone astray in the disobedience of Adam. Humanity, separated from Christ, is without form or beauty. Will God remain deaf, insensible, to the cry of His distressed creature? Will He punish or pardon?

Man's Return

Man, having come from God, must return to God: his Final End. "Thou hast made us for Thyself, O God," cried St. Augustine, "and our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee!"

The creation--a work of sheer mercy, a stooping of the Creator toward the creature--returns to God, chanting a hymn of praise and thanksgiving. A feather from a bird, a ray of light, a finely modulated voice, a drop of water falling to earth, a hastening ant, a seed sprouting from the earth, the stars that whirl in the firmament with never a collision; all are directed by God to that magnificent end for which He has ordained them--man's pleasure, Christ's happiness, and finally, the glory of the Most Holy Trinity.

Your Mass and Your Life

In God's plan, it is not man who is the center of the universe, but Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word. God created all things for Christ. For the sake of Christ Jesus in whom the Father already had "placed all His delight" and for the sake of Mary, His Mother, "full of grace," God decided to create man and the universe.

To this Son, in whom He is well pleased, friends were to be given--and so man was created. (The race of man represents the "friends of the Bridegroom" mentioned by our Lord in the Gospel.) To this Son whom He loves, the Father will give a house and a garden--and so the universe was created. Man, created for Christ, is loved in Him. We thus form, as it were, a "wedding gift" from God the Father to Jesus Christ, the Bridegroom.

In Him, through Him, and for Him, we are pleasing to the heavenly Father. Without Him we are nothing. This is very important for an understanding of the Mass. Our sacrifices are of value only through their being united with Christ's Sacrifice. Since all have issued from the heart of God solely to give pleasure to Jesus, all then are brothers. Creation itself is our kin. The universe and I, what are we, if not a delicate thought of the Father toward His Divine Son?

The creation, launched into existence by God's loving power, will forever have something unfinished about it, until that time when it shall return to the Source of its perfection; there to receive from that same Source its final perfection and beatitude. Thus the general plan of creation appears to us as an image and prolongation of the fecundity of the Most Blessed Trinity. The chronological order of the plan is as follows: (1) Creation of the heavens; (2) Preparation of the earth; (3) Creation of minerals, vegetation, and animals; (4) Creation of man.

King though he may be of that creation predating his own existence, man, however, is not creation's final goal.

Man--simple link in a chain that must go back to God--paves the way for the coming of the blessed Virgin Mary. Mary, God's jewel case, in which reposed He Who upholds all things, Jesus Christ! Christ is the center of the universe. He is before all things: "He is before all creatures" (Col 1:17). "The firstborn of every creature" (Col 1:15). "In the beginning was the Word..." (Jn 1:1).

"In Him...through Him...unto Him...all things!" (Col 1:16,17)